.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Situated on the southeast end of the Piazza San Marco, the Piazzetta is one of Venice’s most majestic places, providing a dramatic transition from the city’s most important public square to the Molo and the lagoon. Formerly occupied by an old market, the Piazzetta assumed its current form in the early 16th century under the direction of the Renaissance sculptor and architect, Jacopo Sansovino (1486-1570). In 1535 Sansovino began work on the Zecca (public mint), the first of three ambitious projects that would revolutionize this key space. The commission was awarded to him by Venice’s Council of Ten, one of Venice’s most important governing bodies, who aspired to replace an older building on the site. Sansovino’s second two buildings, namely the Libreria Marciana and the Loggetta, were built for the Procurators of San Marco, the distinguished office typically reserved for the city’s noble elite. The Library was conceived as a multipurpose building with shops on the ground floor and the Procurators’ offices and the library of San Marco above. First projected in 1532 and only completed after 1585, this magnificent flowering of High Renaissance architecture was Sansovino’s finest achievement, and was deemed by the architect Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) to be the most beautiful building since antiquity. Designed to complement the Library and unify the Piazzetta’s newly-ordered space, Sansovino’s Loggetta was constructed at the base of the basilica’s bell tower, the campanile. This civic loggia, with its harmoniously integrated polychromed marble, opulent, sculptural ornamentation and classically-inspired columns, served as a bold declaration of Sansovino’s new architectural style, and would have a profound effect on Venice for centuries to come.
Canaletto’s view is taken from the east side of the Piazzetta, theoretically from or beneath the west loggia of the Doges’ Palace, the shadow of which is cast in the foreground. Sansovino’s Libreria is seen frontally, with its ordered colonnades providing a striking contrast to the wispy clouds that sweep across the vast blue sky above. At left are the two marble and granite columns surmounted by statues representing the Serenissima’s two patrons, Saint Mark and Saint Theodore of Amasea. Tradition holds that these two columns were brought to Venice as spoils of war by Nicholas Barattieri in 1127. Between them and across the lagoon is the Chiesa della Zitelle on the Giudecca. At right, a narrow, oblique view of the Piazza San Marco is framed by Sansovino’s Loggetta, together with the shed along the campanile’s north side. Notably, the bell tower itself was struck by lightning on 23 April 1745 and the resulting damage to its north-east corner was promptly repaired, as Canaletto himself recorded in a pen and ink drawing in the Royal Collection (W.G. Constable and J.C. Links, op. cit., no. 552).
The Getty painting relates to a slightly earlier version of the composition (fig. 1), which was part of a set of four paintings by Canaletto that were formerly owned by Lord Hampden, Alton, Hampshire (W.G. Constable, op. cit., no. 69). As Canaletto’s earliest frontal view of the Libreria, the Hampden version is painted from a viewpoint slightly to the south of the one Canaletto used for the Getty painting, so that less of the Piazza San Marco is actually visible. Moreover, it is populated with different staffage, including a booth with a puppet-show on a platform in the right foreground. The set was originally acquired by Thomas Brand (c. 1717-1770), who as a minor had inherited The Hoo, Kimpton, Hertfordshire. Brand was educated at Eton alongside Horace Walpole, and later attended Queen’s College before making his first Grand Tour in 1738-39 (J. Ingamells, A Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy 1701-1800 compiled from the Brinsley Ford Archive, New Haven and London,1997, p. 117). W.G. Constable dated the Hampden series to the early 1730s, but this has been shown to be too early, as is Dario Succi's dating to around the middle of that decade (D. Succi, in the exhibition catalogue, Luca Carlevarijs e la veduta veneziana del Settecento, Palazzo della Ragione, Padua, 25 September-26 December 1994, pp. 266-7, under nos. 85-6). A terminus post quem of 1734 for Brand’s view of the Libreria is established, as Succi observed, because Canaletto includes in his painting the new pavement that was laid in the Piazzetta in that year. A more specific terminus ante quem is established by the selection of the companion view of the Grand Canal for inclusion in Antonio Visentini's Prospectus Magni Canalis Venetiarum of 1742. Stylistically a date of 1738, coinciding with Brand's recorded visit to Padua, or shortly thereafter, as Charles Beddington proposed in his catalogue entry for The Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo from the same series (sold Christie’s, London, 12 December 2000, lot 104), seems clear for this earlier treatment of the view.
Constable (op. cit., p. 220) dates the Getty painting to the early 1740s, noting that its high horizon suggests that Canaletto may have captured the view from a balcony or gallery of the Ducal Palace. A related pen and brown ink drawing, perhaps a preparatory design for the Brand painting, was acquired by Joseph Smith and is now in the Royal Collection, Windsor (fig. 2; see K.T. Parker, Drawings by Antonio Canaletto in the Collection of His Majesty the King of Windsor Castle, Oxford and London, 1948, no. 60; and W.G. Constable, op. cit., no. 547). As Beddington (loc. cit.) and Bożena Anna Kowalczyk (loc. cit.) observe, Canaletto's view of the Piazzetta from the Brand collection was a source of inspiration to the artist's nephew Bernardo Bellotto, whose intelligent reprise of the composition is one of the canvasses commissioned by Henry Howard, 4th Earl of Carlisle in Venice during his second Grand Tour of Italy between 1738 and 1739 (Castle Howard Collection, York). In addition to painting the Getty version, Canaletto returned to the composition on at least two other occasions: the larger of the two (ibid., no. 71) was formerly in the Neave collection at Dagnam, and like the Getty painting omits the motif of the puppet show. That motif, however, is taken up again in the smaller variant, dating from the artist's last years (ibid., no. 72) and most recently sold from the Champalimaud collection, Christie's, London, 6 July 2005, lot 15.
Canaletto’s view is taken from the east side of the Piazzetta, theoretically from or beneath the west loggia of the Doges’ Palace, the shadow of which is cast in the foreground. Sansovino’s Libreria is seen frontally, with its ordered colonnades providing a striking contrast to the wispy clouds that sweep across the vast blue sky above. At left are the two marble and granite columns surmounted by statues representing the Serenissima’s two patrons, Saint Mark and Saint Theodore of Amasea. Tradition holds that these two columns were brought to Venice as spoils of war by Nicholas Barattieri in 1127. Between them and across the lagoon is the Chiesa della Zitelle on the Giudecca. At right, a narrow, oblique view of the Piazza San Marco is framed by Sansovino’s Loggetta, together with the shed along the campanile’s north side. Notably, the bell tower itself was struck by lightning on 23 April 1745 and the resulting damage to its north-east corner was promptly repaired, as Canaletto himself recorded in a pen and ink drawing in the Royal Collection (W.G. Constable and J.C. Links, op. cit., no. 552).
The Getty painting relates to a slightly earlier version of the composition (fig. 1), which was part of a set of four paintings by Canaletto that were formerly owned by Lord Hampden, Alton, Hampshire (W.G. Constable, op. cit., no. 69). As Canaletto’s earliest frontal view of the Libreria, the Hampden version is painted from a viewpoint slightly to the south of the one Canaletto used for the Getty painting, so that less of the Piazza San Marco is actually visible. Moreover, it is populated with different staffage, including a booth with a puppet-show on a platform in the right foreground. The set was originally acquired by Thomas Brand (c. 1717-1770), who as a minor had inherited The Hoo, Kimpton, Hertfordshire. Brand was educated at Eton alongside Horace Walpole, and later attended Queen’s College before making his first Grand Tour in 1738-39 (J. Ingamells, A Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy 1701-1800 compiled from the Brinsley Ford Archive, New Haven and London,1997, p. 117). W.G. Constable dated the Hampden series to the early 1730s, but this has been shown to be too early, as is Dario Succi's dating to around the middle of that decade (D. Succi, in the exhibition catalogue, Luca Carlevarijs e la veduta veneziana del Settecento, Palazzo della Ragione, Padua, 25 September-26 December 1994, pp. 266-7, under nos. 85-6). A terminus post quem of 1734 for Brand’s view of the Libreria is established, as Succi observed, because Canaletto includes in his painting the new pavement that was laid in the Piazzetta in that year. A more specific terminus ante quem is established by the selection of the companion view of the Grand Canal for inclusion in Antonio Visentini's Prospectus Magni Canalis Venetiarum of 1742. Stylistically a date of 1738, coinciding with Brand's recorded visit to Padua, or shortly thereafter, as Charles Beddington proposed in his catalogue entry for The Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo from the same series (sold Christie’s, London, 12 December 2000, lot 104), seems clear for this earlier treatment of the view.
Constable (op. cit., p. 220) dates the Getty painting to the early 1740s, noting that its high horizon suggests that Canaletto may have captured the view from a balcony or gallery of the Ducal Palace. A related pen and brown ink drawing, perhaps a preparatory design for the Brand painting, was acquired by Joseph Smith and is now in the Royal Collection, Windsor (fig. 2; see K.T. Parker, Drawings by Antonio Canaletto in the Collection of His Majesty the King of Windsor Castle, Oxford and London, 1948, no. 60; and W.G. Constable, op. cit., no. 547). As Beddington (loc. cit.) and Bożena Anna Kowalczyk (loc. cit.) observe, Canaletto's view of the Piazzetta from the Brand collection was a source of inspiration to the artist's nephew Bernardo Bellotto, whose intelligent reprise of the composition is one of the canvasses commissioned by Henry Howard, 4th Earl of Carlisle in Venice during his second Grand Tour of Italy between 1738 and 1739 (Castle Howard Collection, York). In addition to painting the Getty version, Canaletto returned to the composition on at least two other occasions: the larger of the two (ibid., no. 71) was formerly in the Neave collection at Dagnam, and like the Getty painting omits the motif of the puppet show. That motif, however, is taken up again in the smaller variant, dating from the artist's last years (ibid., no. 72) and most recently sold from the Champalimaud collection, Christie's, London, 6 July 2005, lot 15.