FIGURE 7.1 Giambattista Tiepolo. Saint Clement Adoring the Holy Trinity, ca. 1734-39. Oil on canvas. Loan of the Staatliche Schlosserverwaltung to the Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen, Munich; inv. no. L 877. of the final painting and indicates that Tiepolo Albani (r. 1700-1721) adopted the saint as his had information transmitted to him regarding namesake and promoted scholarship on this 3 the intended scale and the framing of the work. early Christian figure. Saint Clement became The altarpiece represents a radical revision the subject of lively interpretations by early of the initial sketch. Instead of presenting settecento Roman artists, especially the series of Clement at the moment of his martyrdom, paintings for the Roman basilica of San Clemente. Tiepolo eliminated any sense of historical nar- These works concentrated on narrative detail; rative in the final painting, reducing the subject Tiepolo, on the other hand, chose to follow the of the composition to Clement kneeling in format of his other early religious paintings papal regalia within a grand ecclesiastical interior by placing the saint in a highly charged visionary before a majestic vision of the Trinity. moment (e.g., cat. no. 3). Clement Augustus Saint Clement, a shadowy first-century identified closely with this early Christian saint, figure, enjoyed an explosion of interest in the and besides the altarpiece by Tiepolo, he commis- early eighteenth century. Pope Clement XI sioned numerous churches and other altarpieces THE TRINITY APPEARING TO SAINT CLEMENT 5i