The Capture of Carthage

The Capture of Carthage

The Capture of Carthage
Artist:Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (Italian, Venice 1696–1770 Madrid)
Date:1725–29
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:Irregular painted surface, 162 x 148 3/8 in. (411.5 x 376.9 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1965
Accession Number:65.183.2

This painting is from a series of ten magnificent canvases painted to decorate the main room of Ca’ Dolfin, Venice. The subject has been variously identified. It probably shows the capture of Carthage by Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus (known as Scipio Africanus the Younger) in 146 B.C., a momentous event that categorically ended the power of Carthage. The carnage was unspeakable and the city burned for seventeen days. The depiction of this event probably carried an allusion to the recent campaigns of the Venetians against the Turks in the Mediterranean, and in particular to the participation of Daniele Dolfin.
Catalogue Entry
This work is usually identified as depicting the bloody capture of Carthage by Publius Cornelius Scipio, an event that took place in 146 B.C. It is from a series of ten monumental canvases of scenes from Roman history that Tiepolo painted for the grand reception room of the Palazzo Dolfin in Venice. Dating from about 1726–29, the works remained in situ until 1872. In addition to the three in the MMA (65.183.1, 65.183.2, 65.183.3), five are in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, and two in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
The illusionistic architectural framework surrounding the recesses into which the paintings were set dictated the irregular profiles of the canvases, altered when they were removed from the palace in 1872 and restored in the cases of those now in Vienna and New York. The recesses still survive, making a definitive reconstruction of the arrangement of the cycle possible. To either side of the main doorway were the two squarish battle scenes, this work and The Battle of Vercellae, also in the MMA, while opposite them to either side of the center window were the two narrow canvases depicting The Death of Lucius Junius Brutus and Hannibal Contemplating the Head of Hasdrubal, both in Vienna. A sort of triptych appeared on each of the two shorter walls, with the Museum's Triumph of Marius flanked by Fabius Maximus before the Roman Senate and Cincinnatus Offered the Dictatorship, both in the Hermitage, and, opposite, The Tarantine Triumph flanked by Mucius Scaevola before Porsenna and Veturia Pleading with Coriolanus, all in the Hermitage. All the canvases except the two battle scenes were originally provided with banderoles identifying the subjects from Lucius Annaeus Florus's Epitomae de Tito Livio belorum . . . Libri II. (All the banderoles were painted over in the nineteenth century, but some have been uncovered in restoration.)
What makes these pictures so compelling as works of art is the manner in which Roman history is treated as staged theater rather than archaeological fact. To a degree, this approach was typically Venetian, but Tiepolo stands apart from his contemporaries in his insistence on narrative clarity and dramatic focus: at no point does he sacrifice intensity of expression to decorative concerns.
The Tarantine Triumph must be the earliest painting in the series, followed by that work's two flanking canvases, and then the remaining compositions, including the two battle scenes. The Triumph of Marius is unquestionably the latest picture in the cycle, which is why it is dated and why Tiepolo included his portrait in it.
[2010; adapted from Christiansen 1996]

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