# The Scourge of the Serpents \(detail\) [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [TIEPOLO, Giovanni Battista]() - Date: 1701-1750 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 164 x 1356 cm \(complete frieze\) ## Commentary During the 1720s Giambattista Tiepolo developed a new colouristic style of painting derived in principle from the dazzling palette of Veronese and the no less brilliant one of Sebastiano Ricci. Rejecting the tenebrous colour of Piazzetta, we witness in Tiepolo the triumph of colour with a richness of resonance and counterpoint elaborated within the ordered and monumental composition. The great frieze, originally below the choir of the Venetian church of SS. Cosma and Damiani on the Giudecca \(Zanetti 1771\), is a fine example of Tiepolo's work of the 1730s. The painting in its ornate stucco frame decorated with fruit, flowers and leaves is over 13 metres long. Three episodes are depicted with a decorative illusionism contrasting with the declared realist-narrative intent, rendering the painting somewhat melodramatic effect. ## Related artworks - [A Seated Man and a Girl with a Pitcher]() - [Abraham and the Three Angels]() - [Abraham Praying before the Three Angels]() - [Adoration of the Magi]() - [Aeneas Introducing Cupid Dressed as Ascanius to Dido \(detail\)]() - [Aeneas Introducing Cupid Dressed as Ascanius to Dido \(detail\)]() - [Aeneas Introducing Cupid Dressed as Ascanius to Dido]() - [Aeneas Introducing Cupid Dressed as Ascanius to Dido]() - [Allegory of Merit Accompanied by Nobility and Virtue \(detail\)]() - [Allegory of Merit Accompanied by Nobility and Virtue \(detail\)]() - [Allegory of Merit Accompanied by Nobility and Virtue]() - [Allegory of Merit Accompanied by Nobility and Virtue]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()