Exhibited

(?)Venice, Accademia di Belle Arti, 1860, no. 57 ‘Veduta della chiesa e del campo dei SS. Giovanni e Paolo’.

(?)Venice, Accademia di Belle Arti, 1861, no. 64 ‘Veduta della chiesa dei SS. Giovanni e Paolo in Venezia – Copiata da un dipinto del Canaletto’.

Literature

F. Magani, Francesco Zanin, Un “Canaletto” nell’Ottocento, Milan, 2008, pp. 22-4, no. 14, illustrated in colour and with a colour detail.

L. Moretti, ‘Francesco Zanin (1824-1884), vedutista veneziano’, Arte Veneta, 68 (2011), 2012, pp. 286 and 287 (columns 1 and 3).

Surprisingly little is currently known about the career of Francesco Zanin, although a significant number of works by him have come to light in recent years, which reveal him as one of the most gifted and interesting of the Venetian view painters active in the nineteenth century. He graduated from the Venetian Accademia in 1855, when two views of the interior of the Basilica of San Marco were included in the annual exhibition Degli oggetti d’arte ammessi all’Esposizione nelle sale della I.R. Accademia veneta di Belle Arti nell’agosto 1855. His subsequent output is of two quite distinct types. The majority of his known paintings are skilful imitations of the work of Canaletto, often prominently signed in red and occasionally also numbered.

Some of these are actual copies of works by – or then considered to be by – Canaletto.