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Lot Essay
This exquisite painting represents one of Francesco Guardi’s most successful compositions, a view to which he returned repeatedly throughout the course of his career, making minor variations to each (fig. 1). Antonio Morassi, author of the artist’s 1973 and 1984 monographs, considered this to be among Guardi’s mature works, describing it as “di qualità eccellente” (“of excellent quality”; loc. cit.)
The precise chronology of Guardi’s mature works is not easily defined, but this canvas likely dates to the second half of the 1770s. The composition is dominated by the Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, with the west façade (1602-10) of the great church of that saint, built to the design of Andrea Palladio from 1565 onwards. On the right is the eastern extremity of the Isola della Giudecca with the campanile of the church and convent of San Giovanni Battista, which was suppressed in 1767 but not demolished until the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The lyrical, scintillating light, so characteristic of the artist's late maturity and routinely eulogized, is manifest throughout the canvas. In her 1993 exhibition catalogue, Marina Magrini was inspired to write “La ripresa oggettiva viene vivificata da un’intensa vibrazione atmosferica raggiungendo un momento di profonda emozione poetica” (“The view itself is brought to life by an intense atmospheric shimmer, achieving a moment of deep poetry”; M. Magrini, Francesco Guardi: Vedute, Capricci, Feste, exhibition catalogue, Venice, 1993, p. 130, no. 42). Guardi often varied his light source, and therefore the implied time of day at which a particular view was captured. Unusually for the artist, however, of the nineteen pictures of San Giorgio listed by Morassi from the same angle (i.e. from the Piazzetta or the Bacino di San Marco; op. cit., nos. 322 and 418-35), all show this by afternoon sunlight, so that the shadows give relief to the façade, an effect that the architect himself must have intended. While the angle of the light in his views of San Giorgio hardly changes, the field of Guardi’s compositions varies considerably. Thus, while the early picture at Glasgow dating to the mid-1760s shows even less of the Giudecca than this picture, the large canvas at Waddesdon of the same decade (Morassi, op. cit., no. 422 and 419 respectively) extends further to the right to include not only the church of the Zitelle on the Giudecca, but also the Dogana and the church of Santa Maria della Salute. Magrini compares the present picture with one of the two variations of the subject in the Wallace Collection (fig. 2). As in many of the artist’s other variants of the subject Guardi follows the Waddesdon and Glasgow canvases in using the masts and sails of vessels moored along the Molo (their mooring ropes carefully indicated in the foreground) to frame his composition at left and right. The central gondola is a motif introduced in many of the variants, appearing at the same slightly diagonal angle in both the Wallace Collection pictures (Morassi, op. cit., nos. 429 and 432) as well as in others, at Toledo and from the Schäffer Collection, Zurich (Morassi, op. cit., nos. 428 and 431). What distinguishes this work from the aforementioned examples is the boats in the distance, which are less prominent, lending the picture an exceptionally compelling sense of space. Guardi, among view painters, was rare in his ability to return to familiar subjects without losing any of his spontaneity. Indeed, one senses that the inspired minimalism of the present picture is in part due to the fact that he was returning to a subject previously explored.
The precise chronology of Guardi’s mature works is not easily defined, but this canvas likely dates to the second half of the 1770s. The composition is dominated by the Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, with the west façade (1602-10) of the great church of that saint, built to the design of Andrea Palladio from 1565 onwards. On the right is the eastern extremity of the Isola della Giudecca with the campanile of the church and convent of San Giovanni Battista, which was suppressed in 1767 but not demolished until the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The lyrical, scintillating light, so characteristic of the artist's late maturity and routinely eulogized, is manifest throughout the canvas. In her 1993 exhibition catalogue, Marina Magrini was inspired to write “La ripresa oggettiva viene vivificata da un’intensa vibrazione atmosferica raggiungendo un momento di profonda emozione poetica” (“The view itself is brought to life by an intense atmospheric shimmer, achieving a moment of deep poetry”; M. Magrini, Francesco Guardi: Vedute, Capricci, Feste, exhibition catalogue, Venice, 1993, p. 130, no. 42). Guardi often varied his light source, and therefore the implied time of day at which a particular view was captured. Unusually for the artist, however, of the nineteen pictures of San Giorgio listed by Morassi from the same angle (i.e. from the Piazzetta or the Bacino di San Marco; op. cit., nos. 322 and 418-35), all show this by afternoon sunlight, so that the shadows give relief to the façade, an effect that the architect himself must have intended. While the angle of the light in his views of San Giorgio hardly changes, the field of Guardi’s compositions varies considerably. Thus, while the early picture at Glasgow dating to the mid-1760s shows even less of the Giudecca than this picture, the large canvas at Waddesdon of the same decade (Morassi, op. cit., no. 422 and 419 respectively) extends further to the right to include not only the church of the Zitelle on the Giudecca, but also the Dogana and the church of Santa Maria della Salute. Magrini compares the present picture with one of the two variations of the subject in the Wallace Collection (fig. 2). As in many of the artist’s other variants of the subject Guardi follows the Waddesdon and Glasgow canvases in using the masts and sails of vessels moored along the Molo (their mooring ropes carefully indicated in the foreground) to frame his composition at left and right. The central gondola is a motif introduced in many of the variants, appearing at the same slightly diagonal angle in both the Wallace Collection pictures (Morassi, op. cit., nos. 429 and 432) as well as in others, at Toledo and from the Schäffer Collection, Zurich (Morassi, op. cit., nos. 428 and 431). What distinguishes this work from the aforementioned examples is the boats in the distance, which are less prominent, lending the picture an exceptionally compelling sense of space. Guardi, among view painters, was rare in his ability to return to familiar subjects without losing any of his spontaneity. Indeed, one senses that the inspired minimalism of the present picture is in part due to the fact that he was returning to a subject previously explored.