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Lot Essay
The limited facts surrounding Marieschi’s life – which ended when he was barely forty-three – are well-known. He is thought to have trained and practised as a set-designer until turning his hand to vedute, establishing his reputation as a view painter by the mid-1730s and adding lustre to the genre with his lively brushwork. Few of his view pictures have early recorded provenance, and his only known patron was the great collector Count Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg. It has also been established with near certainty that Marieschi focused his energies exclusively on painting landscape and architecture, working in tandem with a number of different figure painters to complete the staffage in his vedute, though in this instance they appear to be by his own hand.
This view is taken from in front of the Scuola Grande di San Marco, with the church of Santi Giovanni and Paolo to the right, opening onto one of the grandest, and most important, squares in the city. On the right is Andrea del Verrocchio's renowned equestrian statue of the condottiero Bartolomeo Colleoni, completed in 1496. Marieschi made an etching of the view for his Magnificentiores Selectioresque Urbis Venetiarum Prospectus, which was key in disseminating the composition to a broader public, though Canaletto had earlier established the standard view in the 1720s with two large format pictures (W.G. Constable, Canaletto, Oxford, 1962, II, nos. 304-305). Here, in order to give the façade of the church itself greater prominence, Marieschi chose to slightly alter the perspective, setting the right aisle, as we look, fractionally deeper. This trick, which results in a clearer view of the façade itself, is repeated in another version of the composition in a private collection (R. Toledano, Michele Marieschi, Milan, 1995, p. 93, V.27.a) which, judging by the strength and size of the shadows cast across the picture, seems to have been painted at the same time of day as this painting. The present picture differentiates itself by the greater number and different arrangement of the figures, with the exception of the group of five men in the central foreground, who serve to anchor both compositions in the same manner. With the light falling from the left, Marieschi distinguishes his views from Canaletto’s versions, which are invariably lit from the right.
We are grateful to Ralph Toledano for confirming the attribution to Marieschi, on the basis of a photograph.
This view is taken from in front of the Scuola Grande di San Marco, with the church of Santi Giovanni and Paolo to the right, opening onto one of the grandest, and most important, squares in the city. On the right is Andrea del Verrocchio's renowned equestrian statue of the condottiero Bartolomeo Colleoni, completed in 1496. Marieschi made an etching of the view for his Magnificentiores Selectioresque Urbis Venetiarum Prospectus, which was key in disseminating the composition to a broader public, though Canaletto had earlier established the standard view in the 1720s with two large format pictures (W.G. Constable, Canaletto, Oxford, 1962, II, nos. 304-305). Here, in order to give the façade of the church itself greater prominence, Marieschi chose to slightly alter the perspective, setting the right aisle, as we look, fractionally deeper. This trick, which results in a clearer view of the façade itself, is repeated in another version of the composition in a private collection (R. Toledano, Michele Marieschi, Milan, 1995, p. 93, V.27.a) which, judging by the strength and size of the shadows cast across the picture, seems to have been painted at the same time of day as this painting. The present picture differentiates itself by the greater number and different arrangement of the figures, with the exception of the group of five men in the central foreground, who serve to anchor both compositions in the same manner. With the light falling from the left, Marieschi distinguishes his views from Canaletto’s versions, which are invariably lit from the right.
We are grateful to Ralph Toledano for confirming the attribution to Marieschi, on the basis of a photograph.