Room 8

Religious commissioning for a borderland

In modern times, the regional territory was divided between the mainland dominion of the Republic of Venice, extended over the territories of the Patria del Friuli, and that of the Habsburgs, operating in the County of Gorizia and its appurtenances. The region, spiritually united by the persistence of the Patriarchate of Aquileia, which exerted its influence throughout its extension, was always open to frequent exchanges between the areas, under the banner of a territorial and cultural continuity that represented the wealth of this geographical area over the centuries. In the artistic field, this always translated into a give-and-take relationship between different contexts, often in terms of a balance between the major centres represented by Venice, Vienna or Ljubljana and their respective suburbs.

These topics are introduced in the exhibition by a late 17th century view of the city of Udine painted by the painter Alessandro Piazza for the aristocrat Angelo Morosini, procurator of San Marco de ultra, who had the opportunity to intertwine his personal history with that of the Friulian region capital, of which he provides a portrait at the time. And a video that summarises the history of the Patriarchate of Aquileia and its influence on the region.

The sensitivity for the colourism of the Venetian school of painting was spread in the Piccola Patria, under the patronage of the patriarchs Dionisio and Daniele Dolfin, who used to invite artists such as Giambattista Tiepolo, Francesco Zugno and Gaspare Diziani to create a number of masterpieces that today represent the artistic heritage of religious buildings and museum institutions in Udine and the whole region. The dissemination of these models was also promoted by printed translations in richly illustrated volumes. The Venetian brand of many paintings for church use was thus able to assert itself also thanks to the requests of parish priests and religious communities in the province of Udine, who often showed a preference for the passionate and popular religiosity interpreted by artists such as Giambattista Piazzetta, rather than the bright lightness of the painting influenced by the Tiepolo. This explains the scant attention paid locally to a painter like Francesco Pavona, born in Udine, who trained in close contact with the Baroque classicism of the Emilia-Bolognese school. He was a restless spirit, who had little presence in Friuli and preferred to move between Venice and the major European capitals.

The dissemination of books was promoted in the agronomic sector by figures such as Antonio Zanon who was very open to the debate on agrarian renewal and proposed and procured volumes from Venice for his Udine friends that represented the best of the new European culture circulating in the Veneto region or of what could be purchased on the foreign market.

Room 9

Nicola Grassi and the commissioning of the Piccola Patria

Among the artists who worked in the first half of the eighteenth century and were born in the Piccola Patria, the carnic Nicola Grassi undoubtedly stands out. He was among the first artists to be valorised in twentieth-century critical literature in relation to lagoon painting. Although initially the painter's Friulian origin was seen as a fundamental starting point in his career, today the Venetian dependence of his expressive language, modulated on the study of figurative sources known and re-elaborated in the lagoon where he was a disciple of the Genoese painter Nicolò Cassana, has been definitively affirmed. Alongside the works on sacred or biblical subjects presented in the exhibition, the intention was to emphasise his portrait production, often considered secondary compared to the works he completed in the church context. In particular, the Portrait of Jacopo Linussio shows how Grassi had developed a modern portrait style, fully in line with what he had observed in the circle of painters revolving around his master's workshop and who, at the beginning of the 18th century, had renewed the language of Venetian painting: these include Rosalba Carriera, Giannantonio Pellegrini, Sebastiano Ricci and Antonio Balestra.

Room 10

Giambattista Tiepolo for Udine patrons

Dionisio Dolfin, spurred to action by the comparison with the Udine patronage deployed in the cathedral by the Manin family, asked the young Giambattista Tiepolo to paint an important cycle of frescoes for the Patriarchal Palace (now the Diocesan Museum and Tiepolo Galleries). The first contacts between the Patriarch and the painter must probably be traced back to the suggestions of Nicolò Bambini, a painter operating around 1709 for the decorations in the Dolfin Palace of San Pantalon in Venice and the creator of several paintings for the Patriarchal Library in Udine in 1710. After the completion of the work in the Patriarchal Palace, it is common to trace other commissions that would have led Tiepolo to work, already during his first stay in Udine, in the Castle and at the request of the Caiselli family. For the palace of the noble family he would later paint the ceiling canvas depicting the Triumph of Virtue and Nobility over Ignorance, perhaps on the occasion of Francesco Caiselli's election as noble councillor of the city in 1749 or to celebrate the wedding of his brother Bernardino to Pisana Brandolini in September 1743. These works are supplemented by the altarpieces depicting the Guardian Angel (1737) and St. Francis of Sales (1733) for the Philippine Fathers, all of which can be traced back to Daniele Dolfin's commission.

Room 11

Noble patronage

The Savorgnan commissioning

In the 18th century, the Savorgnans, a powerful family that had played a leading role in Friulian affairs, lived in Venice. Their artistic patronage in this period, although limited, is directly exercised in the splendid altarpiece of the Our Lady of the Rosary by Giovanni Antonio Guardi in the church of Belvedere in Aquileia (exhibited in Gorizia, Attems Petzenstein palace) by Francesco Savorgnan or his wife, Lucrezia Morosini († 1750), daughter of a Giovannelli, whose family in Venice had supported the work of the still unknown Guardi. Lucrezia may have suggested the name of Giovanni Antonio Guardi to the parish priest of Pinzano, a Savorgnan feud, for the execution of the altarpiece in the parish church. The tabernacle door of an altar in the parish church of Poffabro in Val Colvera, in the area ofManiago where the Giovannellis had possessions, has been attributed to Francesco Guardi (as well as to Giovanni Antonio). Although the commissioning of the canvas for the side altar of the church of San Paolo in Pasiano in Pordenone was attributed to the Savorgnans, the origin of the request that archpriest Giovanni Francesco Locatelli made to the Venetian artist for the Vision of St. John of Matha, also known as The Holy Trinity Redeemer of Slaves, is still to be verified.

The de Pace commissioning

The history of the de Pace family develops both in Venetian and Habsburg territory, on both sides of the 'border', in Udine where they are part of the noble order and in the county of Gorizia from the 18th century onwards, with a definite shift of interests. This path that is also reflected in their artistic choices: their residences are adorned with works by painters from the Veneto area such as Francesco Chiarottini, Giovanni Scajario, Alessandro Longhi and Giovanni Visentin, but there is also a portrait of Maria Theresa of Habsburg painted by Heinrich Carl Brandt. The splendid villa 'on the border' in Tapogliano combines Venetian and Central European models. The de Pace's choices were accompanied by an up-to-date cultural awareness, open to the Enlightenment, as in the case of Bernardino (1748-1827) and his wife, the Viennese Teresa Abensperg und Traun.

Room 12

The religious commissioning after the suppression of the Patriarchate

Placido Costanzi's painting of 1751, in which Pope Benedict XIV hands over the symbols of the two new archbishoprics of Udine and Gorizia to the representatives of Venice and the Empire shaking hands as a sign of peace, represents an epoch-making event: the end of the Patriarchate of Aquileia. This does not mean the end of religious commissioning, which continued to involve important artists from the Veneto area. These include the works by Antonio Marinetti of the Piazzetta school, a prestigious name in the sacred and devotional genre; the works of Pietro Antonio Novelli, one of the most active artists in Friuli and Carnia for the Linussio family in the second half of the 18th century and also engaged in book illustration. These are accompanied by the works of Francesco Fontebasso, who maintained relations in Friuli with rich and wealthy patrons for whom he worked in various churches between Udine and the province. His ties with the Manin family and the Linussio family, for example, are well known. Fontebasso, a disciple of Sebastiano Ricci, studied for some time in Rome at the Academy of San Luca and around the middle of the 18th century was a successful and appreciated painter in Venice on a par with personalities such as Piazzetta and Pittoni.

Room 13

The religious commissioning after the suppression of the Patriarchate

Although the Patriarchate of Aquileia was suppressed in 1751, its history continued to be remembered. In 1792, Pietro Antonio Novelli - probably based on a design by Francesco Florio - outlined in grisaille panels with gilded backgrounds eight central episodes of its thousand-year history, placed in the capitular sacristy of Udine Cathedral for the canons' reflection. It is an official account of the history of the Patriarchate, reconstructed on the basis of ecclesiastical sources and with an accurate figurative study to make the scenes verisimilar. Two drawings referring to this cycle of frescoes are displayed here together with the letter that the painter addressed to Girolamo de Renaldis in 1799 to describe his artistic biography.

Even after the suppression of the Patriarchate, Gaspare Diziani continued to be sought-after by religious patrons in Cividale, Udine and Codroipo, while Francesco Fontebasso executed two altarpieces for the parish church of Brazzano di Cormons in the last period of his activity.

He was joined by one of his disciples, Francesco Chiarottini from Cividale. His first production was essentially of a religious nature but, after a series of trips to central Italy and a stay in Rome, he developed decorative elements for stately homes and perspective and scenographic effects in Friuli and Gorizia with derivations from the school of Bibiena and Giovanni Battista Piranesi, gaining widespread acclaim.