St Martin of Tours

Saint Martin of Tours, painted around 1733 and now in Ca' Rezzonico, depicts the fourth-century Roman soldier who divided his military cloak to share with a freezing beggar at Amiens, later dreaming that the beggar was Christ. Martin became one of Europe's most venerated saints — patron of France, soldiers, and the poor — and his feast day on November 11 was among the most widely celebrated in the Catholic calendar. Tiepolo painted this work in the period following his major fresco cycle at the Palazzo Labia, and the combination of military bearing and charitable act suited his ability to portray both the grandeur of power and the tenderness of human compassion. Ca' Rezzonico, where the painting now resides, is Venice's museum of eighteenth-century art housed in a Longhena palazzo completed in 1756 — the very world for which Tiepolo's paintings were originally conceived. Robert Browning died in Ca' Rezzonico in 1889, and the palazzo's acquisition by Venice in 1935 preserved intact the cultural environment of Tiepolo's century.

The mounted saint dominates the composition from an elevated viewpoint, with the beggar below creating a strong vertical dynamic. Brilliant white highlights on the cloak and armor demonstrate Tiepolo's mastery of light on reflective surfaces.