Pulcinella innamorato: Giandomenico Tiepolo, Ca' Rezzonico, Venezia

Speranza




The Pulcinella was one of the most popular carnival masks and a favourite subject of Giandomenico Tiepolo's (son of the more famous Giambattista Tiepolo), who painted them in all kinds of pursuits and made a series of drawings entitled "La Vita di Pulcinella".

The scene shown here comes once adorned a room in the artist's own villa at Zianigo, which has been reconstructed on an upper floor of the Ca' Rezzonico.

Gian Domenico Tiepolo's abundant vitality, the freedom of this brush strokes and delicate sense of colour are nowhere more apparernt than in this remarkable picture in which the theme of a masquerade is treated with the heroic breadth the elder Tiepolo reserved for his epic mythological compositions, combined with a mysterious, poetic, intimate melancoly and nostalgia.

In the 18th century Venice became the city of carnival -- canrival which began on the first Sunday of October and went on until lent with a short interval from Christmas until Epiphany.

The mask shown in Tiepolo's fresco is that usually worn by ladies and gentlemen of rank, a white face adorned with a huge nose shaped like the beak of a bird of prey.

Pulcinella wore a tall white conical hat, a wide tunic, and voluminous trousers.

This mask existed in Roman time and may have been worn by the Etruscans.

Pulcinella's ancestry is bound up with legends of death and sexuality.

During carnival, Pulcinellas went about in groups shouting obscene jokes and playing all kinds of pranks.

After Pulcinella the most popular masks were those of other characters taken from the commedia dell'arte: Arlecchino, Tartaglia, Brighella, Pantalone, and Doctor Balanzoni.

Women favoured the costumes of Isabella, Colombina, and Smeraldina.