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Lot Essay
Luca Carlevarijs was the most notable painter of views and capricci in Venice at the turn of the eighteenth century. He laid the foundations for Venetian vedutismo, ushering in a new way of seeing and representing the city, and reformulating the idea of view painting that would reach its glorious peak in the work of Canaletto and Guardi.
Born in Udine, he moved to the lagoon city with his sister in 1679 where he would be based for the rest of his career. He is not thought to have trained with any one master, but learned in an itinerant manner; he may have travelled to Rome, where an encounter with Vanvitelli has long been hypothesised (they would also meet in Venice in 1694) as well as to Florence and Bologna. He clearly had diverse interests and talents, with notable expertise in architecture; his interventions as a consultant on various architectural projects are documented on different occasions. The inscription on his portrait meanwhile, engraved by Giovanni Antonio Faldoni after Bartolomeo Nazzari, describes him as ‘mathematicae cultor egregius’, confirming his position as a man of erudite learning. It was perhaps this broader set of horizons that led him to be experimental in his compositions: the works of his early maturity show him intent on transforming architectural scenes into narrative sequences by populating them with figures and creating, in the process, a more dynamic sense of space.
That spirit of invention is seen to full effect in this picture, with the Ponte Rotto in Rome placed in a capriccio setting; it is close in style to the canvas in the Accademia dei Concordi, Rovigo, which shows the same bridge and is similarly datable to circa 1712-14. The Ponte Rotto (or ‘broken bridge’) is the remaining section of the ancient Pons Aemilius, originally built in the 2nd century BC, the earliest stone bridge in Rome. It was swept away in part by the force of the Tiber in 1598; only one arch is left standing today, although in Carlevarijs’s lifetime there were three, a fact he is likely to have only have known from print sources rather than personal experience. With its cool tonality and innovative viewpoint, which animates the scene from river level, it is amongst Carlevarijs’s most successful vedute ideate.
Born in Udine, he moved to the lagoon city with his sister in 1679 where he would be based for the rest of his career. He is not thought to have trained with any one master, but learned in an itinerant manner; he may have travelled to Rome, where an encounter with Vanvitelli has long been hypothesised (they would also meet in Venice in 1694) as well as to Florence and Bologna. He clearly had diverse interests and talents, with notable expertise in architecture; his interventions as a consultant on various architectural projects are documented on different occasions. The inscription on his portrait meanwhile, engraved by Giovanni Antonio Faldoni after Bartolomeo Nazzari, describes him as ‘mathematicae cultor egregius’, confirming his position as a man of erudite learning. It was perhaps this broader set of horizons that led him to be experimental in his compositions: the works of his early maturity show him intent on transforming architectural scenes into narrative sequences by populating them with figures and creating, in the process, a more dynamic sense of space.
That spirit of invention is seen to full effect in this picture, with the Ponte Rotto in Rome placed in a capriccio setting; it is close in style to the canvas in the Accademia dei Concordi, Rovigo, which shows the same bridge and is similarly datable to circa 1712-14. The Ponte Rotto (or ‘broken bridge’) is the remaining section of the ancient Pons Aemilius, originally built in the 2nd century BC, the earliest stone bridge in Rome. It was swept away in part by the force of the Tiber in 1598; only one arch is left standing today, although in Carlevarijs’s lifetime there were three, a fact he is likely to have only have known from print sources rather than personal experience. With its cool tonality and innovative viewpoint, which animates the scene from river level, it is amongst Carlevarijs’s most successful vedute ideate.