.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This exceptionally refined picture is a significant early work by Francesco Guardi, expressing his debt to earlier Venetian vedutisti and celebrating a key moment of the Carnival, Giovedi Grasso. The great Guardi scholar Antonio Morassi (1973, op. cit., p. 362) had a high opinion of the picture, considering it to be ‘fra le piu singolari di Francesco, sia per l’ insolito taglio prospettico sia per il momento di luce fermato dal pittore con eccezionale sensibilità’ ('among the most remarkable by Francesco both for the unusual view and because the light is handled with exceptional sensibility'), writing also of its ‘spirito innovatore, e quasi profetico’ (ibid., p. 236).
The viewpoint is on the north side of the Piazza San Marco looking toward the Piazzetta, with, on the left, the southernmost bay and a half of the portico of St. Marks and the Doge’s Palace with a stand for spectators running the length of the façade: the Campanile is to the right of the center and seventeen bays of the Procuratie Nuove are seen. In the center of the Piazzetta is the structure used for fireworks for Giovedi Grasso (Fat Thursday). The festival, a high point of the Venetian Carnival, commemorated the victory of Doge Vitale Michiel II over Ulrich, Patriarch of Aquileia in 1162. Originally a bull was decapitated and twelve loaves and a dozen pigs were eaten, hence the alternative name the ‘giorno del toro’ ('day of the bull'). The ropes suspended from the Campanile to the Molo and the loggia of the Palace were used for the ‘Dicesa dell’ Angelo’ ('the descent of the Angel') performed by a rope-walker (funambolo).
Guardi’s composition has a distinguished ancestry. Luca Carlevarijs had shown the Campanile in the same perspective in the etching in his Le fabriche, e vedute di Venetia of 1703 (number 50). This was apparently followed by Canaletto in pictures at Cleveland and in an Italian private collection (Constable, op. cit., nos. 53-4), in the latter of which the roofline of the Procuratie is seen in sharper perspective and thus runs downwards to the right. Marieschi also experimented with the view, painting a series of pictures (R. Toledano, Michele Marieschi, 2nd edition, Milan, 1995, nos. V. 2. a-e) and making an etching (ibid., no. V 2.f) in which the Campanile, the Loggia and the Libreria are seen in the same perspective. Guardi follows, but, in order to accommodate the machine for fireworks and the stand against the west front of the Doge’s Palace, exaggerates the width of the Piazzetta considerably.
Guardi, who had previously worked with his elder brother, Gian Antonio, and probably their less gifted sibling, Nicolò, specializing in religious commissions, decorative work and spirited copies of portraits and turquerie, turned to painting views of his adopted city in the later 1750s. He may have sensed that the aging Canaletto, who returned from London in 1756, was no longer in a position to satisfy the demands of British and other visitors. As the compiler established in 1996 (F. Russell, ‘Guardi and the English Tourist’, The Burlington Magazine, CXXX, 1996, pp. 1-19), a high proportion of Guardi’s early views were painted in 1758-9 for three Englishmen on the Grand Tour: John Montagu, Lord Brudenell, later Marquess of Monthermer (1735-1770); Sir Brook Bridges, 3rd Bt. (1733-1791); and Richard Milles (1735-1820) of Nackington. It is tempting to suppose that a view of the Fondamenta Nuova (fig. 1) was bought by William Fermor (1737-1806) of Tusmore, who like Brudenell and Bridges was portrayed by both Mengs and Batoni, to whom Milles also sat. Bridges acquired the larger (51 x 86 centimeter) version of this composition: like many of the stylistically related pictures including this example it was initialed by Guardi, but uniquely it is dated: 1758. This picture almost certainly dates from the same year.
The Guardis acquired by the three men and that now at Oxford were all of three standard sizes, 71.3 x 119, 61 by 96.5 and 51 by 86 centimeters. With the exception of a picture at Berlin, all the canvasses of these formats are of English provenance. The evidence is less clear for the several works of the same period which like this are of a more intimate format, 32.5 by 53.5 centimeters. The beautiful small lagoon views in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (Morassi, op. cit., nos. 639 and 658) may well have been painted for a British tourist, conceivably Brudenell’s tutor, Henry Lyte, who is known to have owned works by the artist; but the evidence for this picture, a further pair (Morassi, op. cit., nos. 552 and 606) and a set of four (Morassi, op. cit., nos. 315, 353, 401 and 605) is not clear.
Mario Crespi (1879-1967) was the son of Benigno Crespi on whose death in 1920 he inherited control of the company that published the Corriera della Sera. Appointed a Senator in 1934, he was a very significant figure in Milan. His brother and business partner Aldo Crespi, who also collected pictures and owned a justly celebrated pair of Canalettos, was the father of Giulia Maria Crespi, the founder of FAI (the Fondo per Ambiente Italiano).
The viewpoint is on the north side of the Piazza San Marco looking toward the Piazzetta, with, on the left, the southernmost bay and a half of the portico of St. Marks and the Doge’s Palace with a stand for spectators running the length of the façade: the Campanile is to the right of the center and seventeen bays of the Procuratie Nuove are seen. In the center of the Piazzetta is the structure used for fireworks for Giovedi Grasso (Fat Thursday). The festival, a high point of the Venetian Carnival, commemorated the victory of Doge Vitale Michiel II over Ulrich, Patriarch of Aquileia in 1162. Originally a bull was decapitated and twelve loaves and a dozen pigs were eaten, hence the alternative name the ‘giorno del toro’ ('day of the bull'). The ropes suspended from the Campanile to the Molo and the loggia of the Palace were used for the ‘Dicesa dell’ Angelo’ ('the descent of the Angel') performed by a rope-walker (funambolo).
Guardi’s composition has a distinguished ancestry. Luca Carlevarijs had shown the Campanile in the same perspective in the etching in his Le fabriche, e vedute di Venetia of 1703 (number 50). This was apparently followed by Canaletto in pictures at Cleveland and in an Italian private collection (Constable, op. cit., nos. 53-4), in the latter of which the roofline of the Procuratie is seen in sharper perspective and thus runs downwards to the right. Marieschi also experimented with the view, painting a series of pictures (R. Toledano, Michele Marieschi, 2nd edition, Milan, 1995, nos. V. 2. a-e) and making an etching (ibid., no. V 2.f) in which the Campanile, the Loggia and the Libreria are seen in the same perspective. Guardi follows, but, in order to accommodate the machine for fireworks and the stand against the west front of the Doge’s Palace, exaggerates the width of the Piazzetta considerably.
Guardi, who had previously worked with his elder brother, Gian Antonio, and probably their less gifted sibling, Nicolò, specializing in religious commissions, decorative work and spirited copies of portraits and turquerie, turned to painting views of his adopted city in the later 1750s. He may have sensed that the aging Canaletto, who returned from London in 1756, was no longer in a position to satisfy the demands of British and other visitors. As the compiler established in 1996 (F. Russell, ‘Guardi and the English Tourist’, The Burlington Magazine, CXXX, 1996, pp. 1-19), a high proportion of Guardi’s early views were painted in 1758-9 for three Englishmen on the Grand Tour: John Montagu, Lord Brudenell, later Marquess of Monthermer (1735-1770); Sir Brook Bridges, 3rd Bt. (1733-1791); and Richard Milles (1735-1820) of Nackington. It is tempting to suppose that a view of the Fondamenta Nuova (fig. 1) was bought by William Fermor (1737-1806) of Tusmore, who like Brudenell and Bridges was portrayed by both Mengs and Batoni, to whom Milles also sat. Bridges acquired the larger (51 x 86 centimeter) version of this composition: like many of the stylistically related pictures including this example it was initialed by Guardi, but uniquely it is dated: 1758. This picture almost certainly dates from the same year.
The Guardis acquired by the three men and that now at Oxford were all of three standard sizes, 71.3 x 119, 61 by 96.5 and 51 by 86 centimeters. With the exception of a picture at Berlin, all the canvasses of these formats are of English provenance. The evidence is less clear for the several works of the same period which like this are of a more intimate format, 32.5 by 53.5 centimeters. The beautiful small lagoon views in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (Morassi, op. cit., nos. 639 and 658) may well have been painted for a British tourist, conceivably Brudenell’s tutor, Henry Lyte, who is known to have owned works by the artist; but the evidence for this picture, a further pair (Morassi, op. cit., nos. 552 and 606) and a set of four (Morassi, op. cit., nos. 315, 353, 401 and 605) is not clear.
Mario Crespi (1879-1967) was the son of Benigno Crespi on whose death in 1920 he inherited control of the company that published the Corriera della Sera. Appointed a Senator in 1934, he was a very significant figure in Milan. His brother and business partner Aldo Crespi, who also collected pictures and owned a justly celebrated pair of Canalettos, was the father of Giulia Maria Crespi, the founder of FAI (the Fondo per Ambiente Italiano).