Madonna in Glory with the Saints

Madonna in Glory with the Saints, painted in 1734 and located in Rovetta near Bergamo, is a major altarpiece from Tiepolo's important series of Bergamo commissions that demonstrate how his reputation extended beyond Venice into the Lombard hinterland. Bergamo's artistic community was connected to Venice through civic and religious ties, and Tiepolo received several significant commissions there in the 1730s, including the frescoes in the Colleoni Chapel. The two-register altarpiece format — heavenly zone with the enthroned Madonna above, earthly saints below — was standard in Italian church art, but Tiepolo's solution always achieved a spatial continuity between the zones that lesser painters could not manage. The warm golden light flooding from the heavenly zone was Tiepolo's characteristic device for unifying the celestial and earthly registers within a single atmospheric space. Rovetta, a small commune in the Val Seriana, preserves this large altarpiece in the context for which it was originally commissioned — a rare survival of Tiepolo's religious work in its intended ecclesiastical setting.

The Madonna and Child appear in heavenly light in the upper zone, saints arranged in adoration below. Tiepolo's management of the colour transition from the cooler, earthly lower zone to the warm, golden celestial upper zone is handled with consummate skill. His figure arrangements in both zones combine formal authority with apparent ease.