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Lot Essay
The Palazzo Pesaro a S. Eustachio, now the Galleria d'arte moderna, is one of the most impressive palazzi on the Grand Canal. The Pesaro purchased two earlier houses on the site in 1558 and 1559, and a third in 1628. A comprehensive reconstruction was planned as early as 1652 by Leonardo Pesaro, who employed the architect Baldassare Longhena. Characteristically Canaletto has, in the present painting, taken minor liberties with architectural detail, omitting the projections in the cornice above the piano nobile which continue the line of the pilasters, and altering the decoration above the arched openings of the upper storey.
This is one of three views of palazzi of very similar dimensions, all of which have been correctly regarded as late works, postdating the artist's final return from England to Venice in or after 1755 (see Links in Constable, ed. Links, 1989, p. 360, under no. 339): the other two, both of English provenance, are the Palazzo Corner della C Grande (formerly Marquess of Crewe) and the Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi (Loyd Collection) (Constable, nos. 323 and 325). The pictures are so similar in size (the Loyd picture proved on recent cleaning to have been slightly enlarged), in internal scale and visual character - elongated figures and a flickering, but brilliant, shorthand of detail are found in all three - that it has to be assumed that these were painted, if not as part of a set, en serie. Canaletto may well have been aware of a demand among the English for drawings of specific palazzi - supplied by Visentini to Consul Smith for example - but in no case was he willing to slavishly adhere to the specific detail of the buildings in question.
Sir Michael Levey ('Canaletto as Artist of the Urban Scene', in the catalogue of the exhibition, Canaletto, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1989-90, p. 20) has recently emphasized the innovative character of much of Canaletto's later work. There are, however, relatively few fixed points in the chronology of Canaletto's last decade. It is thus of some interest that one of the related pictures, the Palazzo Corner della C Grande can perhaps be dated more precisely than has been recognized. This comes from the Crewe collection and is thus likely to have been acquired by John Crewe, later 1st Lord Crewe (1742-1828) who is recorded in Venice in 1761 - when he left the city on 1 December - and in 1762, when he arrived by May and departed on 5 June. He was accompanied by Dr. John Hinchliffe, whose grandson Edward, writing in 1856, records that Crewe purchased the great London: Whitehall and the Privy Garden looking North (Bowhill, the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, K.T.; Constable, no. 439) from Canaletto in Venice, and that he and Hinchliffe visited the artist's studio where Crewe bought a picture while his companion was presented with the drawing for this: his account is circumstantial, but the date he cites, 1760, is clearly inaccurate. The drawing, the Piazza San Marco looking East, subsequently passed to the Crewe collection (Constable, no. 328), and is related to a picture, of incomplete provenance (Constable, no. 15), which is also of the late period. Perhaps because his grandfather neither owned the Palazzo Corner - he exchanged the Whitehall with Crewe, who later secured it on his death in 1784 - or a drawing related to it, this picture is omitted from Edward Hinchliffe's account, but it seems very probable that it was acquired by Crewe when in Venice in 1761-2 and thus establishes a plausible chronology for that in the Loyd Collection and the present work.
This is one of three views of palazzi of very similar dimensions, all of which have been correctly regarded as late works, postdating the artist's final return from England to Venice in or after 1755 (see Links in Constable, ed. Links, 1989, p. 360, under no. 339): the other two, both of English provenance, are the Palazzo Corner della C Grande (formerly Marquess of Crewe) and the Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi (Loyd Collection) (Constable, nos. 323 and 325). The pictures are so similar in size (the Loyd picture proved on recent cleaning to have been slightly enlarged), in internal scale and visual character - elongated figures and a flickering, but brilliant, shorthand of detail are found in all three - that it has to be assumed that these were painted, if not as part of a set, en serie. Canaletto may well have been aware of a demand among the English for drawings of specific palazzi - supplied by Visentini to Consul Smith for example - but in no case was he willing to slavishly adhere to the specific detail of the buildings in question.
Sir Michael Levey ('Canaletto as Artist of the Urban Scene', in the catalogue of the exhibition, Canaletto, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1989-90, p. 20) has recently emphasized the innovative character of much of Canaletto's later work. There are, however, relatively few fixed points in the chronology of Canaletto's last decade. It is thus of some interest that one of the related pictures, the Palazzo Corner della C Grande can perhaps be dated more precisely than has been recognized. This comes from the Crewe collection and is thus likely to have been acquired by John Crewe, later 1st Lord Crewe (1742-1828) who is recorded in Venice in 1761 - when he left the city on 1 December - and in 1762, when he arrived by May and departed on 5 June. He was accompanied by Dr. John Hinchliffe, whose grandson Edward, writing in 1856, records that Crewe purchased the great London: Whitehall and the Privy Garden looking North (Bowhill, the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, K.T.; Constable, no. 439) from Canaletto in Venice, and that he and Hinchliffe visited the artist's studio where Crewe bought a picture while his companion was presented with the drawing for this: his account is circumstantial, but the date he cites, 1760, is clearly inaccurate. The drawing, the Piazza San Marco looking East, subsequently passed to the Crewe collection (Constable, no. 328), and is related to a picture, of incomplete provenance (Constable, no. 15), which is also of the late period. Perhaps because his grandfather neither owned the Palazzo Corner - he exchanged the Whitehall with Crewe, who later secured it on his death in 1784 - or a drawing related to it, this picture is omitted from Edward Hinchliffe's account, but it seems very probable that it was acquired by Crewe when in Venice in 1761-2 and thus establishes a plausible chronology for that in the Loyd Collection and the present work.