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Lot Essay
Born in Udine, and raised in Venice from the age of 16, Luca Carlevarijs would make his name as one of the leading early vedutisti , famed for the influence he had on the successive generation of view painters in Venice, including Canaletto, and on the early market for vedute for Grand Tourists. His formative work, consisting of landscapes and harbour views, appears to have been shaped by a trip which he is thought to have made to Rome in the latter part of the 17th century.
The present lot, dating to c.1690, can be compared to the canvases at Ca’ Zenobio (now the Villa del Prà) in Santa Bona, near Treviso (Rizzi, op. cit., p. 95). It demonstrates both the infuence of the bamboccianti, in the depiction of the figures in the harbour, and of Roman landscapists, notably Salvator Rosa, in the gathering storm clouds. This type of imagined landscape, with the architecture pushed out to the wings and the figures dotted around the scene, attempts to convey a sense of light and air, to replicate the coastal atmosphere. To this end, it can be seen in the context of other painters of nature in northern Italy that followed in Rosa’s wake, such as Pieter Mulier, il Tempesta, Carlo Antonio Tavella and Marco Ricci. The effect of Carlevarijs’s early landscapes on the latter is particularly evident: the depiction of towers, small bridges and distant mountains one sees here feature heavily in Ricci’s work. The lessons Carlevarijs absorbed in creating atmospheric landscapes would be put to use when he returned to Venice to produce the topographical views for which he became so widely known.
The present lot, dating to c.1690, can be compared to the canvases at Ca’ Zenobio (now the Villa del Prà) in Santa Bona, near Treviso (Rizzi, op. cit., p. 95). It demonstrates both the infuence of the bamboccianti, in the depiction of the figures in the harbour, and of Roman landscapists, notably Salvator Rosa, in the gathering storm clouds. This type of imagined landscape, with the architecture pushed out to the wings and the figures dotted around the scene, attempts to convey a sense of light and air, to replicate the coastal atmosphere. To this end, it can be seen in the context of other painters of nature in northern Italy that followed in Rosa’s wake, such as Pieter Mulier, il Tempesta, Carlo Antonio Tavella and Marco Ricci. The effect of Carlevarijs’s early landscapes on the latter is particularly evident: the depiction of towers, small bridges and distant mountains one sees here feature heavily in Ricci’s work. The lessons Carlevarijs absorbed in creating atmospheric landscapes would be put to use when he returned to Venice to produce the topographical views for which he became so widely known.