The Venetian Nocturne Venice, 1665. The air is thick with salt and the heavy humidity of the lagoon. This is the world into which Bartolomeo Pedon enters. He does not paint the bright, sun-drenched vistas of the Mediterranean; instead, he seeks the shadows. His brush finds life in the silvered light of a moonlit landscape or the churning, dark energy of a stormy seascape. There is a specific, restless quality to his compositions, where the real geography of the Italian coast is transfigured by a sensualist imagination. He moves through the late-Baroque period not by following the calm, pastor…