FIGURE 5.3 Francesco Pittoni (Italian, ca. 1654-ca. 173$). Saint Rocco, 1727. Oil on canvas. Budapest, Szepmiiveszeti Muzeum. church, the site of the painter's first exhibition, ceaseless variations on a single theme, they in 1716. Moreover, his mother was in close con- connect to similar series executed by Tiepolo tact with two key confraternity leaders, and one throughout his life, including the Flight into of these men, Anton Francesco Giusti, is the Egypt variations that span his career, the Capricci only person in Tiepolo's lifetime documented as prints of the early 17405, and the Scherzi di 4 owning a painting from this series. Tiepolo Fantasia of about 1743 — 57. These last two series was not the first artist to paint multiple versions are customarily described as capricci, a term of the confraternity's titular saint. Giambattista applied to the inventiveness of musical variation, Pittoni (fig. 5.3), Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, and the Saint Rocco group should be considered Sebastiano Ricci, and Gaspare Diziani all painted a sober relation to these works.5 similarly scaled versions of Saint Rocco in the same period, presumably for members of the sodality. The decidedly urban setting of most of NOTE s these representations (relatively unusual in depictions of the saint) accentuates the connec- 1 Morassi 1950, 202. tion of the images to the urban mission of the 2 Pedrocco 2002, 230-31. organization. 3 For the San Rocco exhibitions, see, for example, Francis Haskell and Michael Levey, "Art Exhibitions in Tiepolo brought astonishing variety to this Eighteenth-Century Venice," Arte veneta 12 (1958): series, presenting the saint as ecstatic, contem- 181-83, 185. plative, despondent, learned, and even con- 4 Federico Montecuccoli degli Erri, "Giambattista Tiepolo: frontational, all within the same limited format. Nuove pagine di vita privata," in Puppi 1998, 1:71. The works combine genre painting and devo- $ For an intelligent review of these works, including the terms capriccio, fantasia, and scherzo, see Christiansen tional imagery, and in their ability to present 1996, 338-69. SAINT ROCCO 43