PIAZZETTA, Giovanni Battista
(b. 1682, Venezia, d. 1754, Venezia)

Three Dominican Saints

1738
Oil on canvas, 345 x 172 cm
Santa Maria del Rosario (Gesuati), Venice

The beautiful church of the Gesuati stands on the banks of the Zattere and is a shrine to eighteenth-century Venetian painting. It contains no less than three stupendous altarpieces by Sebastiano Ricci, Giambattista Tiepolo (who also painted the frescos on the ceiling), and Piazzetta himself. In this work he touched on a source of enormous energy when he created the angel flying upside-down and in the way he plays with the three colours of the saints' habits (white, black, and brown) and their rapt expressions. The saint represented with wide gesture in the centre is St Vincent Ferrer. He is flanked by St Jacynthe and St Louis Bertrand.