PROVENANCE -

With Giancarlo Baroni, Paris.

Anon. Sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 10 January 1995, lot 20.

Rita Boley Bolaffio, U.S.A.

LITERATURE -

A. Rizzi, Luca Carlevarijs, Venice, 1967, p. 100, fig. 38.

Luca Carlevarijs was the first native Venetian painter of views of the city. Though born in Udine, a Venetian possession since 1420, he was orphaned by the age of seven and was taken as a teenager to Venice in 1679 by his sister Cassandra. They moved into a house on the Fondamenta del Carmine which Carlevarijs was to occupy for the rest of his life. Little is known about the first forty years of his existence. Carlevarijs’s contemporary, the art historian P.A. Orlandi (1660-1727) states that he ‘had no real master, but studied here and there’.[i]

The first fixed point for Luca Carlevarijs as a vedutista is the publication in 1703 of his Le fabriche, e vedute di Venetia disegnate, poste in prospettiva, et intagliate da Luca Carlevarijs, a set of 103 engravings of Venetian views. Without precedent in their scope, compositional variety and convincing perspective, these were to serve as a pattern book for Venetian view painters for decades to follow. In his view paintings, on the other hand, Carlevarijs restricted his subject matter almost exclusively to the area around the Bacino di San Marco and between it and the Piazza San Marco, which would have been most immediately recognizable to foreigners. This no doubt contributed to the speed with which he attracted and built up a Grand Tour clientele. One of his innovations proved of irresistible appeal to visiting dignitaries – views of the city incorporating formal receptions or regattas given in their honour and in which they themselves would feature. The earliest of these is that identified as The Reception of the French Ambassador Joseph-antoine Hennequin de Charmont at the Doge’s Palace, 29 April 1703, in the Terruzzi Collection.[ii] Venetian views, mostly destined for foreign visitors, dominate Carlevarijs’ work thereafter.

Aldo Rizzi describes this as a ‘Very interesting drawing, which documents Carlevarijs’s subtle studies from life, here inspired by his nautical interests’. It is, indeed, one of the drawings from the period of infancy of view painting which displays most the character of a sketch from life.

[i] ‘non ha avuto positivo maestro, ma ha studiato or qua or là’ (P.A. Orlandi, Abecedario pittorico …, Bologna, 1704, p. 226).

[ii] Succi, op. cit., pp. 114-16, no. 1, illustrated in colour.