The Grand Canal with the Rialto Bridge from the South; Saint Mark's Square with the Basilica and the Campanile

Francesco Tironi, who may have come from the Friuli north of Venice, was until recently a relatively overlooked artist. Apart from the fact that he was dead by 1806, we know nothing about his life. He may perhaps have been a pupil or assistant of Canaletto, and was unquestionably influenced by his example. As the tonality of this pair of canvases of two of the great set pieces of Venice demonstrates, Tironi was clearly aware of the work of Guardi. He shows the Piazza from a point somewhat to the south of those favoured by Guardi, thus including more of the Procuratie Vecchie on the left than either Guardi or Canaletto had done; while the viewpoint of the Rialto is further back than that of Guardi’s several views of this with the Riva del Vin. No documented pictures by Tironi are known and thus his activity as a vedutista was initially deduced on the basis of his drawings, of which six are in the Albertina at Vienna, related to the series of Ventiquattro Prospettive delle Isole della Laguna engraved by Antonio Sandi and published by Furlanetti in or after 1779. Early works by Guardi were claimed for Tironi by Herman Voss in 1928, but his contribution as a painter has to be judged on the basis of a handful of pictures signed with his initials ‘FT’. An outstanding example is the San Cristoforo, San Michele and Murano from the Sacca della Misericordia at Karlsruhe (Staatliche Kunsthalle), which Charles Beddington convincingly dates to about 1775 (see the exhibition catalogue, Venice, Canaletto and his Rivals, London, National Gallery and Washington, National Gallery of Art, 2010, no. 51). Five other pictures are mentioned in his catalogue entry for the picture by Beddington, who recognised that this hitherto unstudied pair is also by the artist.