Giuseppe Borsato

oil on canvas, 125,5 x 184,5 cm

This picture is set in a monumental classicising rotunda inspired by the Pantheon in Rome, peopled with figures dressed in the latest fashions conveyed with a rapidity and verve that caused Borsato’s contemporaries to praise his “supreme mastery in the handling of caricature which, in certain large pictures, reveals him to be a figure painter”. The space is filled with sculptures celebrating  Venetian artists from the past such as Giovanni Bellini, Palladio, Sanmicheli, Alessandro Vittoria, Tullio Lombardo and Titian, while Canova is personified by the Genius of Sculpture holding a model of Mars the Peacemaker.