.jpg)
GIUSEPPE ZOCCHI
(Florence 1715 - 1767)
A Capriccio of a Bridge over a River guarded by a Tower, a Villa beyond
and
A Capriccio of a Bridge over a River, with a Sculpted Lion on a Pedestal in the Foreground, a Castle and a Renaissance Villa beyond
Oil on canvas
50.2 x 72 cm and
50.5 x 71.8 cm
Provenance:
Baron Michel, 4 Connaught Square, London;1 his (anonymous) sale, Sotheby's, London, 6 December 1989, lot 5, as Giuseppe Zocchi (£198,000).
With Chaucer Fine Art, London (Old Master Paintings & Selected Works by Giovanni Paolo Panini, 26 October - 14 December 1990, nos. 14-15, both illustrated in colour, as Bernardo Bellotto).
Literature:
L. Salerno, I pittori di vedute in Italia (1580-1830), Rome, 1991, p. 214, pls. 62.5-6, both colour, as Bernardo Bellotto.
R. Contini, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection: Seventeenth and eighteenth century Italian Painting, London, 2002, p. 248.
B.A. Kowalczyk in the catalogue of the exhibition Canaletto e Bellotto: L'arte della veduta, Palazzo Bricherasio, Turin, 2008, p. 184, as copies after Bellotto 'executed in the close circle of the artist'.
Published by Luigi Salerno as the work of Bernardo Bellotto (Venice 1722 - 1780 Warsaw), these paintings differ from his notably in their colouring. Both are, however, closely related to known works by the artist. The second painting was clearly inspired by that by Bellotto in the Museo Thyssen, Madrid, which is of similar size.2 While it corresponds with the Thyssen painting in much of the colouration of the foreground figures, which were contributed to Bellottto's version by another artist, it differs widely in the distant mountainous landscape, and the tall trees and house in the centre are replaced by a church tower and the sails of two sailing boats. These sails are shown in a similar position behind a bridge in two drawings by Bellotto of a related imaginary composition in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, and in the Royal Collection.3 The effigy on the wall tomb on the right in the Thyssen version is also here omitted. The two figures shown here in the left foreground and the four in front of the wall at the end of the bridge do not, however, feature in that.
No painting by Bellotto corresponding with the first work is known, but the left hand two-thirds of the composition relates closely to two drawings, one by and one attributed to Bellotto, in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, and the Royal Collection.4 There are, however, extensive differences. Here the castle has been moved towards the left, and everything to the right of it except the bridge itself - including the whole of the distant landscape, the church tower and two adjacent buildings, and the shadow cast by the pole - would seem to be of this artist's invention. A classical ruin shown at the right end of the bridge in the drawings is omitted. None of the larger trees shown here, nor most of the smaller ones, feature in the drawings, where a line of cypresses breaks the skyline to the left. There are also many variations in the detail of the buildings, including the numbers of windows and the position of the clock on the largest tower. The cloud formations are different. Furthermore, all the figures in the painting differ from those in the drawing.
Larger versions of both paintings (60 x 90 cm.) are recorded in the Aldo Borletti Collection, Milan.5 Those appear to be the work of a third, weaker, hand but incorporate elements otherwise unique to the present paintings and to the Bellotto painting and drawings.
1. Both paintings formerly bore labels on the reverse of the frames inscribed 'Canaletto - Landschaft in Verona geb. bei Schwalz-Wien als Marieschi'.
2. Contini, op. cit., pp. 244-9, no. 52, illustrated in colour.
3. Kowalczyk, op. cit., pp. 188-9, nos. 73-4; Contini, op. cit., p. 247, fig. 2.
4. Kowalczyk, op. cit., pp. 184-7, nos. 71-2.
5. S. Kozakiewicz, Bernardo Bellotto, London, 1972, II, pp. 490 and 497, nos. Z-417 and Z-430, both illustrated; Contini, op. cit., p. 247, fig. 1.