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| Venice from the Bacino di San Marco |
Artist:Francesco Guardi (Italian, Venice 1712–1793 Venice)
Date:ca. 1765
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:48 x 60 in. (121.9 x 152.4 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Bequest of Adele L. Lehman, in memory of Arthur Lehman, l965
The view is among the most famous that Venice affords and shows the harbor basin and shipping, and the waterfront from the Mint, at left, to the incomplete façade of the church of the Pietà and beyond. Toward the left are the library, the bell tower and the clock tower, San Marco, the twin columns of the Piazzetta, and the patterned brickwork façade of Palazzo Ducale. The painting is a fairly early example of Guardi’s work in this specialized genre.
Catalogue Entry
This seascape came to light in the 1950s, when it was exhibited at Agnew’s and at the Royal Academy. A bird’s-eye view, taken as if from above the water (even if in fact observed from a gondola or from the island of San Giorgio), it may date to the mid-1760s or a little later and is a quite early example of the views which occupied Francesco Guardi almost exclusively throughout the second half of his life. The buildings are depicted with a fairly high degree of detail, the figures are solid, and the working boats and gondolas are painted in careful perspective. The subject had been popular with Canaletto, who was a generation older and whose influence may still be felt. The Met’s painting was preceded by an enormous Guardi canvas belonging to the Rothschild collection at Waddesdon Manor, which is one of a pair, and was followed, much later, by a painting belonging formerly to the museum in Strasbourg which was destroyed in a fire in 1947.[1] There are more than a dozen variants, several of which have changed hands repeatedly on the art market.[2] If our painting had a pendant, it would typically have shown the opposite view, from San Marco toward the church and the island of San Giorgio Maggiore.
The subject is among the most famous sights that Venice affords: the harbor basin and waterfront of the city from the canal beside the Mint, at left, along the Riva degli Schiavoni to a point well beyond the church of the Pietà. The prison and Palazzo Dandolo (now part of the Danieli Hotel) occupy the center. To the left are the principal buildings of the city, the library, the bell tower and clock tower in the piazza, the church of San Marco, the twin columns of the Piazzetta, and the enormous bulk of Palazzo Ducale. The clock tower and the Pietà hold the keys to a chronology of Guardi’s early views. The earliest possible date for the pair at Waddesdon, as James Byam Shaw (1955) first pointed out, may be established by changes made in 1755 and 1760 to two of the buildings depicted. Such changes, a matter of fascination to both the scholar and the occasional visitor, are often important to the art and science of dating Venetian views, and this is particularly true in the case of Francesco Guardi, whose work is rather poorly documented. But such information must be used with caution, because Guardi, a compulsive draftsman, must often have referred to whatever drawings he had in his studio, rather than returning to look again at the site, and it is therefore possible that he occasionally introduced inaccuracies.
Even allowing for this caveat, the structural changes can be taken into account. In August 1755, according to the diarist Pietro Gradenigo, the scaffolding was removed from the three-story wings (shown here) of the clock tower, while the construction of the façade of the Pietà, which was consecrated in 1760, was abandoned sometime between 1760 and 1763. The Waddesdon view is surely earlier than The Met’s because the Pietà façade appears to be finished. According to the prevailing argument, and it is difficult to imagine any other, Guardi must have been familiar with the plans of the architect of the church, Giorgio Massari, for the marble façade. The building had gone up rather quickly and the view painter decided to show it complete, in anticipation of the event, so that his work would remain up-to-date, little knowing that construction would soon be suspended and would not resume until 1906. In The Met’s canvas the marble work is incomplete. The view is unusual in showing the top of the façade and the roof of San Zaccaria in addition to the bell tower and dome of San Giorgio dei Greci. The staffage is of high quality and interest. The delicate thread-like patterns used especially for the mooring lines of the fishing boats are typical of the artist.
Katharine Baetjer 2017
[1] The canvas at Waddesdon Manor, near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire (2212.1), measures 111 7/8 x 165 7/8 in. (284.5 x 423.8 cm). The pair, both signed, are much the largest view paintings by Francesco Guardi. The measurements recorded for the work formerly at Strasbourg, also one of a pair, are 47 1/2 x 79 in. (120.7 x 200.7 cm), roughly the same height as our picture, but wider. For reproductions, see Morassi 1973?, vol. 2, figs. 414a, 415.
[2] Accessible examples in public collections are at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon. A picture rather similar to ours but smaller (24 x 28 3/4 in. [61 x 73 cm]), and closer to square in shape, was sold at Sotheby’s, New York, June 5, 2002, no. 105, ill. (in color). All are catalogued and reproduced in Morassi’s monograph.
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