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| Sebastiano Ricci Hercules and the Centaur 1706-07 fresco Palazzo Fenzi, Florence |
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| Sebastiano Ricci Punishment of Amor by Anteros 1706-07 oil on canvas Palazzo Fenzi, Florence |
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| Marco Ricci Rehearsal of an Opera ca. 1709 oil on canvas Yale Center for British Art |
"Politically and economically Venice had long been on the decline. After her sea and mercantile power had dwindled, she became in the eighteenth century the meeting-place of European pleasure-hunters, and, indeed, there was no city in Europe which equalled her in picturesque beauty, stately grandeur, luxury, and vice. To be sure, the foreigners brought wealth to Venice, equal or perhaps greater wealth than the industry of her inhabitants had acquired by commerce in previous centuries. It is also true that with the shift of patronage from the Venetian nobility to the rich foreigners – English, Spanish, French, German, and Russian – Venetian art became international in a new sense; for (to give only a few instances) with Sebastiano and Marco Ricci, Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, Jacopo Amigoni, and Canaletto in London, with Tiepolo in Würzburg and Madrid, with Rosalba Carriera in Paris and Vienna, with Bernardo Bellotto at the courts of Dresden and Warsaw, with lesser masters like Bartolomeo Nazari at the court of the Emperor Charles VII, and Francesco Fontebasso and J.B. Lampi at that of St Petersburg, the Venetians appeared as their own ambassadors. But how it happened that on the social quicksand of Venice there arose the most dynamic school of painters will for ever remain a mystery. We know now that the rise was not so sudden as it seemed not so many years ago. But in spite of the revival of the great native tradition in the second half of the seventeenth century, it was only at the beginning of the next that Venice far outdistanced Rome, Naples, Bologna, and Genoa: her European triumph dates from the second decade of the eighteenth century."
– Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy 1600-1750, originally published in 1958, revised by Joseph Connors and Jennifer Montagu and reissued by Yale University Press in 1999
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| Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini Alexander contemplating the corpse of Darius 1708 oil on canvas Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf |
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| Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini Venus weeping over the body of Adonis ca. 1704 fresco Villa Alessandri, Mira |
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| Jacopo Amigoni Mercury about to slay Argus ca. 1730-32 oil on canvas Tate Gallery, London |
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| Canaletto Venice - Grand Canal with Santa Maria della Salute, looking towards the Riva degli Schiavone ca. 1729-30 oil on canvas Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Giambattista Tiepolo Fall of Phaethon 1719 fresco Villa Baglioni, Massanzago |
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| Rosalba Carriera Young Lady with a Parrot ca. 1730 pastel Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Bernardo Bellotto Capriccio with Bridge and Tower ca. 1745 oil on canvas Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| Bartolomeo Nazari Portrait of opera singer Faustina Bordone ca. 1730 oil on canvas Handel House Museum, London |
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| Bartolomeo Nazari Portrait of opera singer Farinelli (Carlo Broschi) 1734 oil on canvas Royal College of Music Museum, London |
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| Francesco Fontebasso Sacrifice of Gideon 1736 oil on canvas Museo Diocesano Tridentino, Trento |
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| Francesco Fontebasso Flight into Egypt 1759 oil on canvas Museo Diocesano Tridentino, Trento |
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| Johann Baptist Lampi Portrait of Empress Catherine II of Russia ca. 1780-90 oil on canvas Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |