Francesco Guardi* (1712-1793)

A Capriccio beside the Venetian Lagoon with an Obelisk and a Lion outside the Walls of a fortified Town

Details

Francesco Guardi* (1712-1793)
A Capriccio beside the Venetian Lagoon with an Obelisk and a Lion outside the Walls of a fortified Town
black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash, brown ink framing lines, watermark leaf and countermark initials
11 x 15½ in. (279 x 395 mm.)

Provenance

G. Blumenthal.
Baroness von Wrangel; Sotheby's, London, 26 November 1970, lot 69, illustrated.
Anon. sale; Christie's, London, 3 July 1990, lot 93, illustrated (£82,500).

Literature

A. Morassi, Guardi, I Disegni, Venice, 1984, no. 628, fig. 603.
J. Bean and W. Griswold, 18th Century Italian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1990, under no. 112.

Lot Essay

Drawings showing similar compositions, but with out the black chalk under-drawing and pentimentti seen in the present drawing, are in the Correr Museum, Venice, in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, in a private collection in Amsterdam and in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, A. Morassi, op. cit., nos. 625-7, figs. 602, 603.
This drawing is probably the first study of the subject and the prototype on which the other version sare dependant.
The quality of each of these drawings, as well as their size, would suggest that they were intended for sale rather than as studies for pictures. Guardi also painted a number of pictures of the same composition, A. Morassi, Guardi, I Dipinti, Venice, 1984, nos. 911-6. These are dated by Morassi to the late 1760s.