Zelotti's Epic Frescoes at Cataio: The Obizzi Saga

Chapter One: Peering Through the Cracks of History

Cataio lies within the borders of Battaglia Terme, a town about forty miles from Venice in the province of Padua (illus. 5). Documents show that “ca’ tajo” designated the cutoff where the land was excavated during the thirteenth century to make one of the canals that slice through the area. Legend had it that the name derived from Cathay, made famous in Italy by Marco Polo, and that the great castle that dominates the town was constructed from designs he described in his journal—a fancy doubtless owed to the similarities of sound and spelling in Italian. The down-to-earth reality, however, is also romantic. The castle (illus. 2) was constructed by Pio Enea Obizzi (illus. 3), a wealthy condottiero, whose imagination transformed an already existing, modest villa into a medieval dream castle thrust into the rock of the Euganean Hills. The immense building was not constructed as a medieval feudal stronghold with towers and high walls for defense; it has some features that deliberately imitate the appearance of a castle, such as a battlement. It was Giuseppe Betussi, however (illus. 6), who conceived and wrote the program for the series of paintings that gave him the warranty to his family’s long and heroic history. Battista Zelotti (illus. 7) was the artist who, following Betussi’s explanation of the events, brought that history to life in the forty frescoes that seem to make the walls of the castle disappear so that the viewer looks out on a world in which men and horses are clashing in mortal struggles, in which crowds are gathered to celebrate the construction of a new bridge, in which beautiful women in fashionable clothes witness an Obizzi wedding, in which a pope is rescued, and in all of which one Obizzi or another participated, usually as hero. The Obizzi family was established in Italy when two young noblemen, the brothers Frisco and Obizzi, arrived in Lombardy as soldiers of fortune in the service of Henry II of Saxony. Henry invaded the north of Italy at the bequest of the bishops to put down the rebellion of the rising mercantile communes against the authority of the church. As his reward, the bishops crowned him king of Lombardy.1 When Henry went back north to continue his war against the Polish ruler Boleslav I, Frisco made his way to Genoa, where he founded the Fieschi family, while Obizzo went to Lucca as Henry’s lieutenant for Tuscany and started the Obizzi line. In 1251 the two families were further united with the marriage of Luigi degli Obizzi to Caterina Fieschi. In the early fourteenth century, Gherardo degli Obizzi, a scholar and knight of Rhodes, moved from Lucca to Ferrara, starting the Ferrara line, to which Pio Enea belonged. By the fifteenth century, the city’s 23 • Chapter One • Zelotti’s Epic Frescoes at Cataio CHAPTER ONE: PEERING THROUGH THE CRACKS OF HISTORY CATAIO PADUA Illus. 5 Map showing location of Cataio in the province of Padua. Courtesy, Italy-weather-and-maps.com. 24 • Chapter One • Zelotti’s Epic Frescoes at Cataio Illus. 6 Filippo Roberti (drawing), Domenico Conte (engraving). Portrait of Giuseppe Betussi, n.d. Courtesy, the Museo Biblioteca Archivio, Bassano del Grappa, Italy. Inset: Battista Zelotti. Portrait of Giuseppe Betussi (from life, ca. 1573), detail from illus. 18, Monarchy, oil on canvas; see page 48. Courtesy, The Dalla Francesca family. 25 • Chapter One • Zelotti’s Epic Frescoes at Cataio Illus. 7 Battista Zelotti (?) Self-Portrait (?), n.d. Courtesy, The Correr Museum, Venice, Italy 䊳 Illus. 8 Title page of Ragionamento Sopra Cataio. 1573. Courtesy, The Frick Art Reference Library 䊲 Illus. 9 The Castle of Cataio in the eighteenth century. Il Castello del Catajo e i suoi Giardini. La Galivernerna Editrice, Battaglia Terme, 2000. 26 • Chapter One • Zelotti’s Epic Frescoes at Cataio governing council listed this Obizzi branch among the noble families of Venice.2 Betussi mentions many details of the Obizzi family history and genealogy in his Ragionamento Sopra Cathaio [sic] (illus. 8). As a condottiero, Pio Enea (1525–88) had secured a lucrative contract (condotto) with Venice to defend the city and the Veneto with his private army, and he was already a wealthy man when he inherited all of the family property in Tuscany, in Ferrara, and in Padua, which had come into the family through the marriage of...