Provenance:

Victor Emmanuel II, King of Italy, by whom presumably commissioned; believed to have remained in the Royal Apartments, Procuratie Nuove, Venice, until the 1960s, and by descent to HRH Princess Pia of Savoy, Switzerland, until 2024.

This painting, commissioned by Victor Emmanuel II and hitherto in the possession of his descendants, would seem to be the masterpiece of Giovanni Grubacs (or Grubas). It commemorates the visit of the Emperor Franz Joseph I to Venice in 1875. That took place in very different circumstances from his previous visit, accompanied by his wife Elizabeth (Sisi) in 1856. The Veneto, which had been part of the Austrian Empire 1798-1805 and from 1814, was lost to Austria in 1866 at the end of the Third Italian War of Independence, when it joined the Italian state. A detailed account of Franz Joseph’s return visit on 5-7 April 1875 is provided in Das Buch für alle, illustrated with several lithographs [1]. After the arrival of Franz Joseph by train at the Venice railway station, the two rulers embraced warmly. The Emperor was then taken to the Palazzo Reale before inspecting the garrison in the Piazza San Marco [2]. At 4pm, they retired to the Royal Apartments. The moment depicted here was just before 9pm, when Franz Joseph and Victor Emmanuel emerged on to the balcony ’to look into the flood of light in the teeming St. Mark's Square.’ The Piazza had been embellished with a fountain and extra lamps. Fireworks and ‘Bengal lights’ were set off in the square and on ships in the Bacino, as shown here. Later, the two rulers attended a ball in the ballroom in the Royal Apartments.

2.

Giovanni Grubas was one of the foremost Venetian view painters of the second half of the nineteenth century (see: G. Perocco, ‘Carlo e Giovanni Grubacs a Venezia nell’Ottocento’, in Quaderni del Lombardo-Veneto, 33, 1991, pp. 4-14; F. Magani, exhibition catalogue Carlo e Giovanni Grubacs vedutisti veneziani del XIX secolo, Milan, 1999; C. Tonini, ‘Grubacs (Grubas) Giovanni’, in La pittura nel Veneto. L’Ottocento, ed. G. Pavanello, Milan, 2003, II, p. 744; D. Succi, Il fiore di Venezia: dipinti dal Seicento all’Ottocento in collezioni private, Gorizia, 2014, pp. 340-2, nn. 272-4; D. D’Anza, in Lo splendore di Venezia. Canaletto, Belotto, Guardi e i vedutisti dell’Ottocento, ed. D. Dotti, exhibition catalogue (Brescia), Cinisello Balsamo 2016, pp. 176-9, nn. 53-4; and La Venezia dei Grubacs, ed. F. Magani, Ponzano Veneto, 2017).

This painting, evidently commissioned by the King to record the event, clearly inspired the artist to excel himself. The painting hung in the Royal Apartments, now part of the Museo Correr, for nearly a century and was retained by the King’s descendants, unlined and in the original frame, until recently.

[1] Das Buch für alle, 19, October 1875, pp. 444-46.. Accessible online at https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/bfa1875/0424/image,info,thumbs.

[2] The Palazzo Reale occupied the space now divided into the Museo Correr, the Biblioteca Marciana and the Museo Archeologico.