Lot 2095 Dα

This small design for a religious ceiling fresco is characterized by its confident brushstrokes and the harmonious combination of pastel shades, which, coupled with the skilful use of light is characteristic of the works of Sebastiano Ricci and his successors in Venice in the 1700s. There is no evidence of a ceiling painting executed by Sebastiano Ricci after this design, but the work is a typical product of the founder of that unmistakable Venetian Rococo style in which the figures spiral upwards in a zigzag pattern, starting in darker foreground, here formed by the shadowy faces of the putti, before gradually being dissolved within a blaze of bright light.