Bellerophon rides his anatomically correct horse Pegasus. Pegasus earlier had assisted Bellerophon in killing the beast Chimera. Soon Pegasus would throw Bellerophon off because Bellerophon had angered the gods by riding too close to them. For the rest of his life Bellerophon was condemned to wander and to live alone. As we shall see, this metaphoric myth had some application to the fate of the Labia family. The winged figure of Amor tumbles out of the frame onto us at four o'clock in the picture. All the frescoes in the room are by Giambattista Tiepolo with the assistance of Geralomo Mengozzi Colonna.
Giambattista Tiepolo
b. Venice 1696 - d. Madrid 1770
He became the most famous 18th Century painter in Italy. He was a merchant's son. Giambattista's father died during his childhood. He later married the sister of the painters Antonio and Francesco Guardi. He worked as a painter of subjects from Classical antiquity, sometimes as allegories, for the ruling class. He painted ceilings, wall frescoes, and canvases for the likes of Prince Karl Philipp von Greiffenklau of Würzburg and Charles III of Spain. Giambattista Tiepolo also worked for confraternities, churches, and religious orders to paint grand Biblical allegories. His monumental works were painted in a theatrical style in the tradition of the great Veronese. And as with Veronese, his surviving works guaranteed the recognition of Venice in producing some of the greatest painters in the world.
Geralomo Mengozzi Colonna
b. 1688 - d. 1766
Colonna was born in Tivoli. He assisted Tiepolo in Venice for almost 20 years. In fact, most of his career seems to have been involved with assisting others. He was a quadratura or perspective and his skills were in high demand which likely accounts for his assisting so many other artists. He worked on the frescoes in Villa Valmarana, Vicenza (1757) with Tiepolo. These portray mythological scenes from The Aeneid, The Iliad, Ariosto's 'Rolando Furioso' and Tasso's 'Gerusalemme Liberata'. He also assisted on the important 'Anthony and Cleopatra' frescoes at the Palazzo Labia in Venice. He assisted Jacopo Guarana in the music room at the Ospedaletto, also in Venice.
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1) Palazzo Labia Approach [81]
