5 completed the fresco in eight months. Their work presents a fictive cornice, with a balustrade above, surrounding a huge opening into the sky, through which the Miracle of the Holy House appears. On the pendentives and the lower section of the vaulting, Tiepolo and Mingozzi Colonna painted scenes referring to the Ark of the Covenant, an Old Testament precursor to the 6 Translation of the Holy House. In October 1915, the Austrian army bombed the church, destroying the ceiling (fig. 8.2), so the two preliminary oil sketches are now all that remains (cat. no. 8 and fig. 8.3). The exis- tence of two different sketches for the same commission is unusual in Tiepolo's practice and indicates the commission's theological and compositional complexity. From the beginning, Tiepolo envisioned the central scene as entirely open to the sky. To convey the ascent and flight of the house, and to connect the heavens, the cottage in flight, and the expelled figures, Tiepolo radically foreshortened the figures and presented them all di sotto in su (daringly ren- dering the angels far larger than the Virgin and Child). The work in Venice, the earlier of the two sketches, contains the basic elements of FIGURE 8.3 Giambattista Tiepolo. Oil sketch for the later versions but positions the house in the The Translation of the Holy House ofLoreto, 1743. Oil on canvas. lower register, with an energetic tilt that gives Venice, Galleria delFAccademia. Photo: Scala/Art Resource, New York. the impression of rapid movement, an effect enhanced by the figures moving across the edges of the oval composition. trumpets. At top, executed in near-grisaille, a The oval shape of the sketches proves that concert of angels accompanies God the Father, they were made before Mingozzi Colonna who opens his arms to greet the Santa Casa. invented the more complex,architectural form In contrast to the general upsurge, a mass of seen in the finished fresco. This change dates dark, flailing figures in the lower register hurtles the sketches securely to 1743 and underlines downward into the viewer's space, while a the close working relationship between the two throng of turbaned men with halberds peers in painters; the trumpeting angels at right, for from the periphery. example, reveal the artists' interest in down- Unlike in the earlier sketch in the Accademia, playing the unalterable side vaults that encroach Tiepolo shifted the Santa Casa higher, thereby on the otherwise smooth expanse of the main centralizing and stabilizing the primary group. 7 ceiling. To increase the grandeur and monumentality of In the Getty sketch, the Virgin and Child the Holy House, Tiepolo divided the complex stand atop the humble structure, accompanied composition into three distinct zones. The by Saint Joseph, who kneels on a cloud to fallen angels and heretics at the bottom of the the right, his staff discarded and hands raised canvas now take on more force, and the heavenly above his head in prayer. A swarm of angels figures at the top mass in a more focused pyra- and putti, swathed in rich daubs of color, raise mid. To stress the upward motion of the house, the house to a distant heaven, while a group Tiepolo reduced the number of figures in the of angels enters at far right with a blast of upper register gazing in from the edges. 56