PROVENANCE -

With Jacques Goudstikker, Kalverstraat 73, Amsterdam, before 1927.

Paul Siegfried Daniel May (1869-1940) and Rosine Mariane May-Fuld (1871-1940), Amsterdam; their sale, Mensing & Zoon (Frederik Muller & Co.), Amsterdam, 14 October 1941, lot 2, as Canaletto.

With Rosenberg & Stiebel, New York, May-October 1963, as Michele Marieschi.

With Galleria Lorenzelli, Bergamo (Michele Marieschi, September-October 1966, no. 4, illustrated), as Michele Marieschi.

Private Collection, Milan.

EXHIBITED -

Castello di Gorizia, Guardi, Metamorfosi dell’immagine, June-September 1987, 

p. 197, no. 10.                                                                                   

LITERATURE -

R. Pallucchini,’Considerazioni sulla Mostra bergamasca del Marieschi’, Arte Veneta, 1966, p. 319.

A. Morassi, Guardi. L’opera completa di Antonio e Francesco Guardi, Venice, 1973, p. 413, under cat. 553.

D. Succi, catalogue of the exhibition Guardi. Metamorfosi dell’immagine, Castello di Gorizia, June-September 1987, pp. 52-3, nn. 33-34-35, illustrated; p. 197, no. 10.

D. Succi, Francesco Guardi. Itinerario dell’avventura artistica, Cinisello Balsamo, 1993, pp. 33-4, fig. 25 (colour).

This painting is a key work in Francesco Guardi’s early development, at the time it was painted being probably the most ambitious view painting which the artist had undertaken. Sold in 1941 as the work of Canaletto, it was recognised as Guardi’s work by Professor Antonio Morassi when exhibited in 1966 as the work of Marieschi. In his review of the exhibition, loc. cit., Professor Rodolfo Pallucchini states Morassi’s intention to publish the painting as an early view by Guardi. Morassi subsequently published it in his standard catalogue of the paintings of the Guardi brothers, loc. cit. Since then it has been included in an exhibition of Guardi’s work organised by Dario Succi and reproduced in colour in Succi’s monograph on Francesco Guardi. 

Originally from the Val di Sole in the Trentino near the Swiss and Austrian borders, the Guardi family had been granted a patent of nobility in 1643.

Francesco’s father Domenico (1678-1716) trained as a painter in Vienna, remaining there until around 1700 when he moved to Venice. Almost nothing is known of Domenico’s work and he died when Francesco was a child. A far more significant influence on Francesco was his elder brother Giovanni Antonio (1699-1760), who presumably took over his father’s studio in 1716. (Giovanni) Antonio was a highly gifted and original figure painter on a very wide range of scales. From 1729 until 1747 he was part of the retinue of Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg and resident with him at Palazzo Loredan dell’Ambasciatore on the Grand Canal, executing portraits and copies of works by other artists, including most of a series of 43 Turkish scenes after Jean-Baptiste van Mour. This salaried employment was not, however, exclusive and during this period Antonio also, for instance, provided the figures in a number of Venetian views by Michele Marieschi. Among the brothers’ siblings were a sister Cecilia, who married in 1719 Venice’s greatest figure painter Giambattista Tiepolo, and a brother Nicolò (1715-1786), who was also a painter and may have been responsible for some of the Venetian views traditionally given to Francesco, but by whom not a single certain work is known.

Domenico Guardi was intimately associated with the very rich Giovanelli brothers of Noventa Padovana by 1702, and it was they who commissioned his only certain work, a San Zeno of 1716 in the parish church of Valtrighe. Montecuccoli degli Erri has established that Antonio took over his father’s role of executing copies for the Giovanelli and remained in their employment until his adoption by Schulenburg in 1729. The will of Giovanni Benedetto Giovanelli of 1731, which mentions copies ‘by the Guardi brothers’, is the earliest mention of work by Francesco, and suggests that he had, in turn, replaced Antonio in the brothers’ employment in 1729, when he was 17 years old. These observations of Montecuccoli degli Erri are particularly significant, as they establish that Francesco would have become very familiar in his formative years with the collection of paintings at the Villa Giovanelli, which included Carlevarijs’s spectacular Allegories of Peace and War, and Canaletto’s magnificent pair of capricci, of 1723. Francesco was, however, to remain in the family business of figure painting and executing copies for nearly three decades.

Of the few figure paintings certainly by Francesco, most are datable to the later decades of his career. These include A Miracle of Saint Hyacinth (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), probably of the mid-1760s, and an altarpiece of Saints Peter and Paul with the Trinity (Parish Church, Roncegno), which must be of about 1782. a Bishop Saint in Ecstacy (Museo Provinciale, Trent) is signed on the reverse, and one of two large panels of personifications of Abundance and Hope (John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota) was formerly signed. discussion continues over the attribution of other figure paintings. The Madonna of the Seven Sorrows with Saints and The Trinity with Saints (Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna), which were given by Morassi to Antonio, are now considered to be Francesco’s. It is generally felt, however, that Francesco was distinctly less able as a figure painter than his brother.

It seems likely that Guardi was first tempted to try his hand at view painting before Canaletto’s return from England in 1755, executing copies of engravings by and after Canaletto. Copying was, after all, his normal modus operandi, although from the start his views are distinguished by his own highly individual colouring. His marriage in 1757, followed by increasing responsibilities (two sons who survived beyond infancy were born in 1760 and 1764), may well have encouraged him in this new direction, before the death of his brother Antonio in 1760. His first – and indeed, only – dated painting is of 1758, a depiction of The Festival of Giovedì Grasso in the Piazzetta, of which a close version must be of similar date (plate 52). The dated version and The Giudecca Canal and the Zattere (plate 53) were both owned, along with three other paintings, by Sir Brook Bridges, who is recorded in Padua in June 1757. Eight other paintings in Guardi’s first style as a view painter must have been acquired by John Montagu, Lord Brudenell, the great patron of Antonio Joli, who was in Venice by 21 September 1758, and left on 24 February 1760. Evidence provided by such details of Grand Tours is particularly useful is establishing Guardi’s chronology, as, although he was prolific, both as a painter of capricci and views, the variety of his manners of painting makes his work difficult to date with any precision. Where the circumstances of patronage are unknown, and the paintings do not depict specific events, dating may often depend on the costumes of the sprightly figures.

The reference to Francesco of 1764 in Gradenigo’s Notatori has given rise to much discussion, not least because of his description of the painter as a ‘good pupil of the renowned Canaletto’. more surprising is his statement that Guardi owed his success to the camera obscura, since of all the Venetian view painters who have been accused of relying on mechanical aids, he can surely have benefitted from their use the least. At this stage in his development, however, the predominant interest in atmosphere which characterizes his later production was yet to overtake a concern for the structure of the man-made element in his views.