The Palazzina frescoes
Homer, Virgil and Ariosto by the father's hand.
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**A villa frescoed throughout by Tiepolo father and son in a single summer โ with seventeen stone dwarfs along its wall** โ a short walk from La Rotonda. โ **The name comes from the statues**: **"ai Nani", "of the dwarfs"** โ **a row of stone figures on the wall**, โ **with a local legend about the owner's daughter**, **though they are most likely simply Baroque garden ornament** of a then-common kind. โ **The real value is the frescoes**: **painted in 1757 by Giambattista Tiepolo** โ the greatest Venetian painter of the 18th century โ **and his son Giandomenico**. โ **The difference between father and son is the lesson**: **the father painted epic scenes in the *Palazzina*** from Homer, Virgil and Ariosto; โ **the son painted daily life in the *Foresteria*** โ peasants, harlequins, carnival and a Chinese idyll. โ **And the garden has a view over the city.**
Homer, Virgil and Ariosto by the father's hand.
Daily life, carnival and a Chinese idyll by the son.
Seventeen figures on the wall that gave the villa its name.
Stradella dei Nani 8, 36100 Vicenza, Italy
**The father paints an ideal world looked up at; the son paints a real one you stand inside โ and that is an epochal shift.** โ **Giambattista (the father)**: **the last of the great Venetian Baroque painters**. **His subjects are epic and mythological** โ **the sacrifice of Iphigenia**, and scenes from the **Iliad**, the **Aeneid** and **Orlando Furioso**. โ **His manner is celestial**: **figures raised up, open skies, pale colour, and a low viewpoint** that sets the scene soaring above you. **The aim is grandeur.** โ **Giandomenico (the son)**: **in the guest house he painted quite different subjects** โ **peasants eating, harlequins, a carnival scene, a Chinese idyll, and people watching**. โ **His manner is earthbound**: **figures at your eye level**, **sometimes with their backs to you** as though you stood among them; **calmer colour and slower movement**. **The aim is observation.** โ **Why it matters**: **this shift โ from elevated myth to observed life โ is what happened to European art as a whole** in the following decades. โ **And you see it here within one family, in one summer**, **in two adjacent buildings**. โ **Which is why you should not skip the guest house.**
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