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| Antonio Balestra Zephyr before 1740 oil on canvas Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice |
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| Antonio Balestra Virgin and Child adored by St Ignatius Loyola and St Stanislaus Kostka ca. 1731 oil on canvas Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna |
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| Antonio Balestra The Raising of Lazarus ca. 1733 oil on canvas Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool |
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| Antonio Balestra The Death of Abel before 1740 oil on canvas David Owsley Museum of Art, Muncie, Indiana |
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| Antonio Balestra The Soul of Abel ascending to Heaven before 1740 oil on canvas Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona |
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| Antonio Balestra Saints Cosmas and Damian saved by an Angel 1718 oil on canvas Basilica di Santa Giustina, Padua |
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| Antonio Balestra Martyrdom of Saints Cosmas and Damian 1718 oil on canvas Basilica di Santa Giustina, Padua |
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| Antonio Balestra Dream of St Joseph ca. 1700-1703 oil on canvas Scuola Grande dei Carmini, Venice |
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| Antonio Balestra The Centaur Chiron receiving the Infant Achilles ca. 1710-20 oil on canvas Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Antonio Balestra Meeting of Telemachus and Calypso ca. 1700 oil on canvas Milwaukee Art Museum |
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| Antonio Balestra Theseus finding his Father's Sword before 1740 oil on canvas private collection |
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| Antonio Balestra The Prophet Isaiah before 1740 oil on canvas Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona |
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| Antonio Balestra Venus appearing to Aeneas and Achates before 1740 oil on canvas Pinacoteca Egidio Martini, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice |
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| Antonio Balestra Justice and Peace Embracing ca. 1700 oil on canvas Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow |
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| Antonio Balestra Virgin and Child with St Stanislaus Kostka, St Luigi Gonzaga and St Francesco Borgia 1704 oil on canvas Chiesa dei Gesuiti, Venice |
"As far as the history of painting is concerned, the seventeenth century was by and large a 'dark' century. Roughly between 1660 and 1680 a change came about and a trend towards the lightening of the palette began, culminating in Tiepolo and the Rococo masters of the Venetian school. While Venice accomplished the transition to Rococo painting through a luminosity derived from a new scale of airy, transparent colours, through new patterns of undulating or zigzag compositions which are precariously 'anchored' along the lower edge of the picture, through elegant and elongated types of figures calling to mind the Mannerist figura serpentinata, through the gallant or voluptuous or arcadian or even flippant interpretation of their subjects – while all this happened in Venice during the 1720s and 30s, the leading Roman and Bolognese masters continued to practise their feeble Late Baroque far into the eighteenth century. They believed themselves to be the legatees of the great Italian tradition and looked with scorn upon its perversion. How deeply this was felt may be gathered from the anti-Rococo cry raised in 1733 by Antonio Balestra (1666-1740). Himself trained by Maratti, but practising mainly in Venice, he wrote from a position of eminence: "All the present evil derives from the pernicious habit, generally accepted, of working from the imagination without having first learned how to draw after good models and compose in accordance with the good maxims. No longer does one see young artists studying the antique; on the contrary, we have come to a point where such study is derided as useless and obnoxious."
– Art and Architecture in Italy, 1600-1750 by Rudolf Wittkower (1958), revised by Joseph Connors and Jennifer Montagu for Yale University Press (1999)