Dawn

Diziani, born in Belluno early in 1689, was reportedly sent to Venice for further study at the age of twenty. In due course he entered the Venice atelier of the Bellunese Gregorio Lazzarini, and later that of Sebastiano Ricci, by whom he was chiefly influenced. The French critic and connoisseur Pierre Jean Mariette states that for several years Diziani worked abroad, first in Munich, in 1717, and thereafter in Dresden. The artist returned to Venice no later than 1720 as he is listed in the "Fraglia dei pittori di Venezia" from 1720 to 1726. From time to time he is recorded in his native Belluno and he also visited Rome, but for the greater part of the balance of his life he remained in Venice, working there and in the surrounding region. Much of Diziani’s site-specific work is still in situ. Early in his career he had been a scenographer, though nothing survives of his production in this genre, and he was also a gifted and prolific draftsman.

The Met’s painting by Diziani entered the collection as part of the decoration of the principal bedroom of Palazzo Sagredo on the Grand Canal in Venice, which was bought in its entirety and moved from the palace to New York in 1906 (06.1335.1a–d). The room belonged to a small private suite on two floors joined by private staircases, all decorated in the same extravagant style, and the wood- and plasterwork in one of them, dated 1718, is signed by the Swiss-born stuccatori Abbondio Stazio and his assistant Carpoforo Mazzetti Tencalla. It was at first assumed that the ceiling painting was of the same moment as the signed woodwork, and therefore commissioned by the great drawings collector Zaccaria Sagredo, whose monogram is above the archway in the room and who died in 1729. Aikema (1997) convincingly argued that the bedroom may be somewhat later than the other rooms of the suite, and if work on the stucco ceiling decorations of the various rooms continued through the 1720s, then the painting of Dawn could be assigned to the 1730s. Zugni Tauro (1971) had dated the canvas to circa 1755–60.

Katharine Baetjer 2016

Palazzo Sagredo, Venice (until 1906); [Antonio Carrer, Venice, 1906; sold to The Met]

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Venetian Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum," May 1–September 2, 1974, no catalogue.

Giuseppe Fiocco. Letter to Joseph Breck. September 29, 1925, attributes the ceiling painting to Gasparo Diziani.

Preston Remington. "A Bedroom from the Palazzo Sagredo at Venice." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 21, part 2 (April 1926), p. 14, dates the decoration of the Sagredo bedroom about 1718; notes that some if not all of the stucco decoration was executed in 1718 by Abbondio Stazio and Carpoforo Mazzetti-Tencalla, according to an inscription in a room above the one where the bedroom was located.

Harry B. Wehle. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Catalogue of Italian, Spanish, and Byzantine Paintings. New York, 1940, p. 279, ill.

Art Treasures of the Metropolitan: A Selection from the European and Asiatic Collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1952, p. 237, under no. 186.

Preston Remington. "The Galleries of European Decorative Art & Period Rooms." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 13 (November 1954), p. 127, ill. (detail of installation).

Josephine L. Allen and Elizabeth E. Gardner. A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1954, p. 30.

Giovanni Mariacher. "L'arte dello stucco a Venezia nel '700: Il Palazzo Sagredo a Santa Sofia." Giornale economico (April 1961), p. 408.

G. Mariacher. Arte e artisti dei laghi lombardi. Vol. 2, Stuccatori ticinesi a Venezia tra la fine del '600 e la metà del '700. Como, 1964, pp. 83, 90 n. 6.

Anna Paola Zugni-Tauro. Gaspare Diziani. Venice, [1971], pp. 79–80, pl. 217, dates the painting between 1755 and 1760.

Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972, pp. 65, 468, 605.

Federico Zeri with the assistance of Elizabeth E. Gardner. Italian Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Venetian School. New York, 1973, pp. 25–26, pl. 24.

Howard Hibbard. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1980, pp. 352, 354, fig. 637 (color).

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 87, ill. p. 85.

James Parker in Period Rooms in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1996, p. 70, ill. p. 71 (color), dates the painting about 1720.

Bernard Aikema. "'Il famoso Abondio': Abbondio Stazio e la decorazione a stucco nei palazzi veneziani, circa 1685–1750." Saggi e memorie di storia dell'arte 21 (1997), p. 119 n. 66, dates the painting to the 1730s or 1740s.

Giuseppe Pavanello. "Gli stucchi veneziani del Settecento: Le fonti e le opere (IV)." Ricche minere no. 5 (June 2016), pp. 22, 42 n. 9, fig. 9 (color).