A capriccio of the Venetian Lagoon with an obelisk outside a fortified town, figures in the foreground

Details

Francesco Guardi (1712-1793)
A capriccio of the Venetian Lagoon with an obelisk outside a fortified town, figures in the foreground
black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash, watermark leaf and proprietary
279 x 395 mm.

Provenance

George Blumenthal.
Baroness von Wrangell; Sotheby's London, 26 November 1970, lot 69.
Anon. sale, Christie's London, 3 July 1990, lot 93.
Anon. sale, Christie's New York, 30 January 1997, lot 75.

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.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

Drawings with similar compositions 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. 602-3.
The presence of black chalk underdrawing and the pentimenti on the present drawing shows that this is probably Guardi's first version of this composition. Such drawings were probably intended for sale as independent works of art.

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