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| Dawn |
Artist:Gaspare Diziani (Italian, Belluno 1689–1767 Venice)
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:78 x 94 1/2 in. (198.1 x 240 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1906
Accession Number:06.1335.1b
Catalogue Entry
Diziani, born in Belluno early in 1689, was reportedly sent to Venice for further study at the age of twenty. In due course he entered the Venice atelier of the Bellunese Gregorio Lazzarini, and later that of Sebastiano Ricci, by whom he was chiefly influenced. The French critic and connoisseur Pierre Jean Mariette states that for several years Diziani worked abroad, first in Munich, in 1717, and thereafter in Dresden. The artist returned to Venice no later than 1720 as he is listed in the "Fraglia dei pittori di Venezia" from 1720 to 1726. From time to time he is recorded in his native Belluno and he also visited Rome, but for the greater part of the balance of his life he remained in Venice, working there and in the surrounding region. Much of Diziani’s site-specific work is still in situ. Early in his career he had been a scenographer, though nothing survives of his production in this genre, and he was also a gifted and prolific draftsman.
The Met’s painting by Diziani entered the collection as part of the decoration of the principal bedroom of Palazzo Sagredo on the Grand Canal in Venice, which was bought in its entirety and moved from the palace to New York in 1906 (06.1335.1a–d). The room belonged to a small private suite on two floors joined by private staircases, all decorated in the same extravagant style, and the wood- and plasterwork in one of them, dated 1718, is signed by the Swiss-born stuccatori Abbondio Stazio and his assistant Carpoforo Mazzetti Tencalla. It was at first assumed that the ceiling painting was of the same moment as the signed woodwork, and therefore commissioned by the great drawings collector Zaccaria Sagredo, whose monogram is above the archway in the room and who died in 1729. Aikema (1997) convincingly argued that the bedroom may be somewhat later than the other rooms of the suite, and if work on the stucco ceiling decorations of the various rooms continued through the 1720s, then the painting of Dawn could be assigned to the 1730s. Zugni Tauro (1971) had dated the canvas to circa 1755–60.
Katharine Baetjer 2016
Copyright Image
https://images.metmuseum.org
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