Mario Pasalic scored a hat-trick, with Josip Ilicic and Luis Muriel on inspirational assist form, as Atalanta crushed Venezia for their fourth consecutive victory.
La Dea were fresh from victory away to Juventus, putting them firmly in the Scudetto race, but Robin Gosens and Matteo Lovato were still out of action and Gian Piero Gasperini rotated the squad with seven changes. Venezia missed Niki Maenpaa, Antonio Junior Vacca, David Okereke and Tyronne Ebuehi.
It took just 19 seconds for Gianluca Busio to unleash a screamer from distance that Juan Musso had to palm over the bar.
Atalanta broke the deadlock with a moment of magic from Josip Ilicic, who not only threaded his slide-rule pass through a sea of legs for Mario Pasalic to sweep home, he even nutmegged Tanner Tessmann in the process.
Pasalic was on target again five minutes later with another well-worked move, as he gathered from Ilicic, completed a give-and-go with Luis Muriel to burst into the box and score from 10 yards.
Musso got down quickly for a great one-handed save on Thomas Henry, who had controlled a ball over the top and fired a daisy-cutter, then smothered Tessmann’s strike.
It remained wide open, substitute Crnigoj testing Musso, but Sergio Romero and Mattia Caldara combined to prevent Pasalic completing his hat-trick on another absolutely magnificent Ilicic assist through the eye of a needle.
The third did eventually arrive after another quick passing move, finalised by Teun Koopmeiners with a precise low first-time drive from the D into the bottom corner.
Muriel should’ve made it 4-0 soon after, but he thumped the base of the near post after a give-and-go with Pasalic and dummy towards the far stick.
Instead, Muriel burst down the left, turned Ethan Ampadu inside out and pulled back from the by-line for Pasalic to complete his hat-trick.
Aleksei Miranchuk almost got the fifth, cutting inside to drill just past the post.
Atalanta 4-0 Venezia
Pasalic 7, 12, 67 (A), Koopmeiners 57 (A)