National Gallery of Australia | Audio Tour | Three Centuries of Italian Art

Time with a scythe to cut short time unveils Truth who holds the sun in her left hand while old Lies tumbles from a cloud. This allegory extols the virtues of Tiepolo’s patron, a prominent lawyer, who commissioned it for the ceiling of a vast hall. Tiepolo was a master of Venetian 18th century Rococo ceiling painting.

In Florence, del Sarto probably worked from a life sketch but often departed from the ‘coloured drawing’ and composed his paintings using patches of colour and shade. The Madonna, perhaps modeled on his wife, occupies a compressed space between green curtains and a stone parapet as she supports a child of classical rather than natural proportions. His twisting pose and the strong colours point the way to Mannerism.

Bassano was a leading 16th century Venetian Mannerist and this was painted in his youth. When Catherine remained true to her faith and refused the advances of a Roman Emperor in Alexandria, she was bound to a wheel with spikes. This works depicts the confusion of the moment when a thunderbolt destroyed the wheel, and an angel appears, bathed in a supernatural light. The controlled composition of the powerful twisted torsos is painted in luminescent, carefully delineated colours.

Campi introduced a regional realism to the Carracci Academy in Bologna and also influenced Carravaggio, who was born in Lombardy. This sentimental subject is treated formally in a strong composition of repeated shapes. From a high viewpoint the bounteous harvest of fruit and vegetables is visible, as is the woman who is as round and fresh as the fruit she displays. The painting may be an allegory of love, symbolised by the grapes in her hand.

This reflects on different experiences of ‘love’. The idealised noble figure, holding a wild-orange as a symbol of love, occupies a shadowed spiritual space of melancholy love. The other young man is more aggressively realistic and stands in direct lighting. During his short career, Giorgione inspired by mythology or secular literature produced paintings shrouded in mystery.

Lotto was a restless traveller who absorbed many influences but left many letters and records. Here is a miraculous story told in simple and direct human terms. Gabriel announces to the Virgin ‘You shall conceive and bear a son and you shall give him the name Jesus’. Mary turns away from her reading of Isaiah 7:14, which begins ‘A young woman who is pregnant will have a son’. The light of the Christian faith fills the space which is her bed-chamber. It would have been against the decorum of the times to show Mary in fear and the cat amplifies this. The lily is a symbol of the Virgin. There is a Venetian quality to the light and colour of this altar-piece and a Northern-European attention to detail.

Moretto, from Brescia, was one of the most distinguished Renaissance painters of the16th century. He was influenced by both the naturalism of Lombardy and the colour and light of Venice. The artist was personally involved in the local movement of Roman Catholic reform and this is reflected in this direct, solemn and moving image of the Madonna and Child which he painted for a patron for private devotion.

Dressed Spanish-style in fine silk from Bergamo, a town on the outskirts of the Venetian Republic, this proud and haughty young knight is about to marry for the second time. The inscription ‘Better the last than the first’ refers to this marriage. Ivy symbolises constancy of love while the broken sculpture is a reminder of vanity and fragility.

This artist developed Florentine Mannerism, influenced by Michelangelo. Figures are muscular and in inventive poses, compressed into a space which has little depth. The painting may contain several stories. Moses is the central pivot for this turbulent composition but also appears in the red drapery rushing to save his future bride. He defends the seven daughters of Jethro from men who have deprived them of water for their flocks.

This religious drama typifies the arrival of Mannerism in Venice with its heightened colour and uninhibited figures in action. The Virgin and her cousin Elizabeth, soon to become the mother of John the Baptist, are both pregnant. Joseph and Zaccariah observe their embrace. Tntoretto wrote on his wall ‘The drawing of Michelangelo and the colouring of Titian’.