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Lot Essay
A luminous large scale photograph bathed in light, in San Zaccaria, Venice, 1995, is one of Thomas Struth's most accomplished photographic works. One of only three editions left outside of museums, editions of San Zaccaria, Venice are included in the Sammlung Marx im Hamburger Banhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo, Le Fonds National de l'art Contemporain, Paris, The Cleveland Museum, Cleveland, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and The Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich.
'The body of work Struth made in places of worship in different cultures around the world developed over a number of years. The genesis of these works can be seen in some of the Museum Photographs, which included people looking at religious paintings in museums In San Zaccaria, Venice (1995) Struth constructed his composition around the central figures of the Madonna and Child in Giovanni Bellini's Sacra Conversazione and included a number of visitors involved in different acts of looking, from aesthetic to religious contemplation. Struth had been introduced to Bellini's painting by the Scottish art historian Giles Robertson, the subject of two of Struth's earliest portraits. Robertson had published an important monograph on Bellini in 1968 in which the Sacra Conversazione was the frontispiece. Struth had become fascinated by the presence of the painting in its original setting whilst spending some time in Venice in 1990 in residence at the Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani. 'Looking at works which had not been isolated from their original context, which were still in the place and perhaps in the belief system for which they had originally been made, stimulated new possibilities. Having been raised as a Catholic I was reluctant to expand my work from the realm of art-historical museums into the domain of the religious'' (T. Struth, quoted in A. Kruszynski, T. Bezzola, J. Lingwood (eds.), Thomas Struth Photographs 1978 - 2010, New York 2004, p. 204).
'The body of work Struth made in places of worship in different cultures around the world developed over a number of years. The genesis of these works can be seen in some of the Museum Photographs, which included people looking at religious paintings in museums In San Zaccaria, Venice (1995) Struth constructed his composition around the central figures of the Madonna and Child in Giovanni Bellini's Sacra Conversazione and included a number of visitors involved in different acts of looking, from aesthetic to religious contemplation. Struth had been introduced to Bellini's painting by the Scottish art historian Giles Robertson, the subject of two of Struth's earliest portraits. Robertson had published an important monograph on Bellini in 1968 in which the Sacra Conversazione was the frontispiece. Struth had become fascinated by the presence of the painting in its original setting whilst spending some time in Venice in 1990 in residence at the Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani. 'Looking at works which had not been isolated from their original context, which were still in the place and perhaps in the belief system for which they had originally been made, stimulated new possibilities. Having been raised as a Catholic I was reluctant to expand my work from the realm of art-historical museums into the domain of the religious'' (T. Struth, quoted in A. Kruszynski, T. Bezzola, J. Lingwood (eds.), Thomas Struth Photographs 1978 - 2010, New York 2004, p. 204).