Week 8: 18th Century Venetian Painting and the Theatre of LIfe

Between Truth and Fantasy in 18^th Century Venice.

Canaletto, Capriccio: The Horses of San Marco in the Piazzetta, 1743, Royal Collection, Windsor, Oil on canvas, 108 x 129,5 cm.

Allesandro Longhi, Portrait of Carlo Lodoli, 1760s, oil on canvas, location unknown.

Pietro Longhi, The Painter in his Studio, 1740-45, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice, Oil on canvas.

 Giambattista Tiepolo, The Artist with Presumed Portrait of his Son, Domenico, 1752-53, Detail of Apollo and the Four Continents, Residenz, Würzburg, fresco.   

Painting in 18^th century Venice bloomed at a time when the intellectual climate was changing radically throughout Europe. The political, scientific and philosophical movement that is known as the “Enlightenment” stressed reason as opposed to the glorified fantasies of the baroque; it was inevitable that such an intellectual trend would have consequences for a school of painting that included Tiepolo whose art was completely irradiated with fantastic ideas and conceits. Yet it would be naïve to judge the stylistic opposite of Tiepolo,  Canaletto as lacking in imagination. Canaletto experimented with a genre known as “capriccio”: a subversion of established ways of painting which depended upon a central joke or conceit. For example, Canaletto brought the Horses of St Marks down from the Basilica and set them up on pedestals in the square in a painting from his later career.  Such imaginative treatment of the real environment found favour with some critics, even those who supported the Enlightenment.  Antonio Conti was aware of scientific developments in Paris and London, and he made the trip to see the Enlightenment for himself.  Newton supported Conti’s application to the Royal Academy, and on his return to Venice, the Italian brought with him a spirit of rationalism that influenced the intellectual climate in the city. As Francis Haskell observes, Conti made “an interesting defence of fantasy in painting which chimed in well with contemporary practice.”[1] Conti who approved Canaletto’s use of the camera obscura, highlighted the problem of the roles that fantasy and reason should play in the creative act (Haskell). By contrast, another Venetian intellectual, Padre Carlo Lodoli insisted on a realistic approach to the arts: he rejected outright Conti’s defence of fantasy and preached astringency in the arts, especially architecture which he insisted should be functional. It is easy to imagine his attitude to painters of make-believe like Tiepolo and Piazzetta who for him would have exemplified the worst excesses of the baroque in their compositions and their painted architecture. Not much is known about Lodoli’s views on painting, but it seems logical to assume that the art of Canaletto and Visintini would have met with his approval.

Pietro Longhi’s Scenes of Venetian Life.

Francesco Guardi, The Ridotto, 1755, Ca’ Rezzonico, Venice, oil on canvas, 108 x 208 cm.

Pietro Longhi, The Visit, 1745, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, oil on canvas, 60.9 x 49.5 cm.

 Pietro Longhi, The Temptation, 1746, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, oil on canvas,  61 x 49.5 cm.

Att to Anton Raphael Mengs, Portrait of Giocomo Casanova, Collection Armando Preziosi, Bologna, oil on canvas, dimensions not known.

Lodoli’s portrait was painted by Allesandro Longhi who had a more famous and successful son, Pietro. His work depicts meetings, breakfasts, salons, scenes of Venetian life peopled by men and women from all social classes. Though there is an undoubted charm to Longhi’s fashionable scenes painted in muted pinks, greens and earth colours, there is occasionally an abstract, disjointed feeling to his compositions. This may have contributed to the attitude on the part of some scholars that there is a vacant, arid quality to Longhi’s art rather than that his pictures convey the reality of life. Do his scenes of Venetian mean anything? Do they show real locations such as we read about in Casanova’s Memoirs? Like Guardi, Longhi showed the Ridotto or the gambling hall where Casanova passed the time by losing money.[2] Longhi’s perception is difficult to pin down: it is not exactly the satiric eye of the caricaturist; nor is it the gaze of the observational journalist. There probably is some satiric intent lurking beneath the surface of these stock types: beautiful women, procuresses, gondoliers, aristocrats,- the Venetian dramatis personae. Longhi was a close friend of the playwright Goldoni who had relinquished the masked comedies in favour of a return to nature, and it is not impossible that the painter inspired the playwright.[3] Wether Longhi deliberately set out to instil a “new realism” in Venetian art in the early 18^th century, it is telling that Goldoni called him a man “looking for the truth,” it seems significant that his paintings were celebrated by those patrons and connoisseurs who took more than a passing interest in the true situation of Venetian life. Inevitably, Longhi began to be compared to Tiepolo whose imaginative creations were contrasted with the genre painter’s “imitations of life.”  In one article in the Osservatore Veneto, the nearest thing to a newspaper in Venice, another dramatist Gasparo Gozzi who compared Tiepolo unfavourably to Longhi, describes a gallery of pictures owned by an old man- the personification of Wisdom- who had exchanged his paintings of beautiful women for scenes of peasants working in the country, a genre of painting that Tiepolo’s son, Domenico was to make his own with his memorable fables of Punchinello and the commedia dell arte.[4] 

Heading Towards Comedy in Venice

Giambattista Tiepolo, Caricature of a Man holding a Tricorn, 1740-45, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,  pen and pale brown ink, 17.3 x 11.1 cm.

  Giambattista Tiepolo, Caricature of a Man in a Mask and a Tricorn, c. 1760 (Pignatti), pen and ink with wash on paper, 18.5 x 10.2 cm.

 Giambattista Tiepolo, Caricature of a Gentleman and Other Studies, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, over black chalk.

Circle Of Giambattista Tiepolo, Punchinello with Dumpling or Fritter, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, over leadpoint or black chalk.

In Italy, the caricature has a long history going back to Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings of old men. However, this might be classified as the overlapping of both the portrait and caricature genres: Leonardo amused himself by drawing the men with unusual ugliness, but this was not really comedy since Leonardo undertook it in a spirit of merciless scientific enquiry. Centuries later during the era of the Grand Tour when Italy was visited by many wealthy and pompous aristocrats, caricature thrived. Artists like Pier Leone Ghezzi mercilessly drew connoisseurs, both Italian and foreign in amusing situations and attitudes. Many of these milordi sported the hat known as a tricorn which found its way into the caricaturist’s sketch book. Good examples of drawings of these by G. B. Tiepolo exist, but sometimes he would combine the emblem of aristocratic fashion with a specific Venetian feature: the mask, a symbol of aristocratic intrigue and fantasy.[5] There are similar caricatures by Tiepolo’s son, Domenico who worked with his father at Würzburg and in Spain and who like his father learnt from Venetian masters like Veronese. After Giambattista’s death in 1770, Domenico kept his father’s albums but added his own drawings to them. Thus, we have a sheet comprising old men and a row of oriental and bizarre heads, many of which appear in his religious paintings which caused disquiet in the minds of the anti-fantasy faction in Venice.[6] These caricatures should be contrasted with the grave, dignified heads of old men found in a series of etchings from the 1750s known as the “Raccolta di Teste” by Domenico, his father and his brother Lorenzo. These heads of Orientals and philosophers are entirely without humour and owe much to Domenico’s: Rembrandt and G. B. Castiglione.

The Art of Natural Acting in Domenico Tiepolo

Domenico Tiepolo, Scene of Contemporary Life: The Acrobats, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, pen and dark brown ink, brush and brown wash, over traces of black chalk.

Domenico Tiepolo, Departure of the Gondola, mid 1750s or 1760s, Private Collection, oil on canvas, 35.5 x 72.5 cm.

Domenico Tiepolo, A Dance in the Country, 1755, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, oil on canvas, 29 3/4 x 47 1/4 in. (75.6 x 120 cm

Domenico Tiepolo, The Burial of Punchinello, c. 1800, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, pen and ink, brown and yellow wash, over black chalk, 29.5 x 41.2 cm.ion

As Goethe observed in 1765 on a visit to Venice, the comedy of life seen in the streets of the city with its buyers and sellers, its sights such as canals, gondolas, piazzas and boatmen, is repeated in the theatre in the evening. “In the evening these same people go to theatres to behold their actual life presented with greater economy as make-believe interwoven with fairy stories and removed from reality by masks, yet in the characters and manners, the life they know… I never saw more natural acting than that of these masked players, an art which can only be achieved by an extraordinarily happy nature and long practice.”[7] Linda Wolk-Simon remarks that Goethe could be describing the sort of scene shown in Domenico paintings and drawings where masked players of the Commedia dell-arte, Punchinello, Harlequinn, Columbine, Coviello (Doctor) cavort in the streets of Venice, or in the case of one painting, Dance in the Country, at an entertainment at a country villa. Here, a group of aristocratic Venetians gather at a country house and players from the commedia dell arte who often stayed at country seats create a villegiatura, or country holiday, the rural equivalent of the festive dance in the city.[8] Renowned for their improvisatory skills, these players spoke without a script relying on a schematic plot called a canavaccio.[9] And it was none other than Gozzi who introduced this fresh and naturalistic innovation to Venetian theatre; his real life theatre contrasted sharply with the affectations of the French stage which had never really welcomed the commedia dell’ arte. Watteau’s paintings of stock commedia dell’arte figures convey the melancholy of the dispossessed players; but Domenico’s paintings show the troupe at the heart of Venetian social life, not at the margins. Even travellers from France like Charles de Brosse noted the truth in Italian comedy rather than the stilted artifice of the French theatre. Perhaps we find the nearest thing to truth in Venetian painting in Domenico’s colourful evocations of a cheerful people. It is fitting that Goethe called the Venetians “children” since Domenico’s 100 drawings of the escapades of Punchinello were subtitled Divertimenti per li ragazzi (Entertainments for Children).

Venetian Arcadias and Pastoral Realism

Francesco Zuccarelli, Landscape with Cattle & Figures, about 1750-70, National Gallery, London, oil on canvas, 92.7 x 132.4 cm.

Guiseppe Zais, Landscape with a Group of Figures Fishing, 1770-80, National Gallery, London, oil on canvas, 49 x 65.5 cm.

Domenico Tiepolo, Family Meal, Family Meal, 1757, Fresco, Villa Valmarana, Vicenza.

 Domenico Tiepolo, Punchinello's Departure, 1797, Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice, fresco.

It is hardly surprising that landscape was a neglected genre in 18^th century Venice. Both patrons in the city or foreign visitors either craved the weightless fantasies of Tiepolo, or the architectural views of Canaletto, or the marine impressionism of Guardi. However, even such an important patron of Canaletto like Consul Smith began to seek out landscape artists like Francesco Zuccarelli who became famous for landscapes filled with English architecture, much admired by the likes of Lord Burlington. After Zuccarelli left Venice for England in 1752, Smith employed Guiseppe Zais whose pastoral landscapes are not so distant from realistic genre because they include fashionable Venetians who could have strayed from a Longhi picture watched by members of the rural peasantry. But of course it was Domenico who had most successfully combined high born elegance with the actual circumstances of Venetian life. In the frescoes at the Villa Valmarana, Vincenza, Domenico produced a wonderfully light evocative series of designs that celebrate rural life; and in another fresco in the Ca’ Rezzonico he painted a poignant scene of Punchinello leaving his comrades in a landscape.  

Slides.

1.      Canaletto, Capriccio: The Horses of San Marco in the Piazzetta, 1743, Royal Collection, Windsor, Oil on canvas, 108 x 129,5 cm.
2.      Allesandro Longhi, Portrait of Carlo Lodoli, 1760s, oil on canvas, location unknown.
3.      Pietro Longhi, The Painter in his Studio, 1740-45, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice, Oil on canvas.
4.      Pietro Longhi, The Visit, 1745, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, oil on canvas, 60.9 x 49.5 cm.
5.      Pietro Longhi, A Fortune Teller at Venice, 1756, National Gallery, London, oil on canvas, 59.1 x 48.6 cm.
6.      Pietro Longhi, The Temptation, 1746, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, oil on canvas,  61 x 49.5 cm.
7.      Pietro Longhi, The Ridotto in Venice, 1750's, Private collection, Oil on canvas, 84 x 115 cm,
8.      Francesco Guardi, The Ridotto, 1755, Ca’ Rezzonico, Venice, oil on canvas, 108 x 208 cm.
9.      Att to Anton Raphael Mengs, Portrait of Giocomo Casanova, Collection Armando Preziosi, Bologna, oil on canvas, dimensions not known.
10.  Francesco Guardi, The Parlour of the Nuns at San Zaccaria, 1745-50, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice, Oil on canvas, 108 x 208 cm.
11.  Francesco Guardi, Landscape in the Environs of Venice, Szépmûvészeti Múzeum, Budapest
12.  Oil on canvas, 17 x 23 cm.
13.  Giambattista Tiepolo, The Artist with Presumed Portrait of his Son, Domenico, 1752-53, Detail of Apollo and the Four Continents, Residenz, Würzburg, fresco.   
14.  Domenico Tiepolo, The Crucifixion, National Gallery, London, 1750-60, oil on canvas, 80 x 89.2 cm.
15.  Paolo Veronese, Family of Darius before Alexander, 1565-67, National Gallery, London, oil on canvas, 236.2 x 474.9 cm.
16.  Detail: Group of woman, dwarf and dogs.
17.  Domenico Tiepolo, (after Veronese) Three Dogs (from Family of Darius), c. 1743, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, black chalk, heightened with white, on blue paper, 33.3 x 23.3 cm.[10]
18.  Pier Leone Ghezzi, Marco and Carlo: Caricature of Two Men Standing face to Face, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, pen and dark brown ink over graphite or lead point, 25 x 18.8 cm.
19.  Giambattista Tiepolo, Caricature of a Man holding a Tricorn, 1740-45, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,  pen and pale brown ink, 17.3 x 11.1 cm.
20.  Giambattista Tiepolo, Caricature of a Man in a Mask and a Tricorn, c. 1760 (Pignatti), pen and ink with wash on paper, 18.5 x 10.2 cm.
21.  Giambattista Tiepolo, Caricature of a Gentleman and Other Studies, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, over black chalk.
22.  Giovanni David, Le Masque de Caffé, 1775, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York etching and aquatint.
23.  Circle Of Giambattista Tiepolo, Punchinello with Dumpling or Fritter, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, over leadpoint or black chalk.
24.  Domenico Tiepolo, Scene of Contemporary Life: The Acrobats, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, pen and dark brown ink, brush and brown wash, over traces of black chalk.
25.  Domenico Tiepolo, Departure of the Gondola, mid 1750s or 1760s, Private Collection, oil on canvas, 35.5 x 72.5 cm.
26.  Domenico Tiepolo, A Dance in the Country, 1755, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, oil on canvas, 29 3/4 x 47 1/4 in. (75.6 x 120 cm).[11]
27.  Domenico Tiepolo, The Infant Punchinello with his Parents, c. 1800, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, pen and brown ink, two shades of brown wash, over black chalk, 29.3 x 41. 1 cm.
28.  Domenico Tiepolo, Punchinello as Dressmaker, c. 1800, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, pen and brown ink, two shades of brown wash, over black chalk 35.4 x 47 cm.
29.  Domenico Tiepolo, Punchinello outside a Circus, c. 1800, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 34.9 x 46.4 cm.
30.  Domenico Tiepolo, Punchinellos Felling a Tree, c. 1800, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, pen and ink, brown wash, over black chalk, 35.3 x 47.3 cm.
31.  Domenico Tiepolo, The Burial of Punchinello, c. 1800, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, pen and ink, brown and yellow wash, over black chalk, 29.5 x 41.2 cm.
32.  Francesco Zuccarelli, Landscape with Cattle & Figures, about 1750-70, National Gallery, London, oil on canvas, 92.7 x 132.4 cm.
33.  Guiseppe Zais, Landscape with a Group of Figures, 1770-80, National Gallery, London, oil on canvas, 49.5 x 65.5 cm.
34.  Attributed to Guiseppe Zais, River Landscape with Mendicant Figures, 1709-84, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, pen and  brown ink, brush and gray wash, traces of framing lines in pen and brown ink, 32.1 x 47.9 cm)
35.  Guiseppe Zais, Landscape with a Group of Figures Fishing, 1770-80, National Gallery, London, oil on canvas, 49 x 65.5 cm.
36.  Domenico Tiepolo, Peasants at Rest, 1757, Villa Valmarana, Vicenza, Fresco.
37.  Domenico Tiepolo, Family Meal, Family Meal, 1757, Fresco, Villa Valmarana, Vicenza.
38.  Domenico Tiepolo, Punchinello's Departure, 1797, Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice, fresco.

[1] Francis Haskell, Patrons and Painters, 319.

[2] For some readings of Longhi’s paintings- by no means proven- see Rolf Bagemihl, “Pietro Longhi and Venetian Life” in Metropolitan Museum Journal of Art, Vol. 23, 1988, 233-249.

[3] Haskell, Patrons and Painters, 323.

[4] See the description in Haskell, Patrons and Painters, 324; also, Michael Levey, Rococo to Revolution: Major Trends in Eighteenth- Century Painting (Thames and Hudson, 1977, rep. 1992), 138.

[5] George Szabó, Eighteenth-Century Italian Drawings from the Robert Lehman Collection, 1981,

[6] Jacob Bean, William M. Griswold 18th Century Italian Drawings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ex. cat. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1990, cat. no. 264, fig. no. 264, pp. 264-65, ill.

[7] Goethe, Italian Journey: “During the daytime, squares, canals, gondolas and palazzi are full of life as the buyer and the seller, the beggar and the boatman, the housewife and the lawyer offer something for sale, sing and gamble, shout and swear. In the evening these same people go to theatres to behold their actual life presented with greater economy as make-believe interwoven with fairy stories and removed from reality by masks, yet in the characters and manners, the life they know. They are delighted, like children shouting, clapping and generally making a din. From sunset to sunset, from midnight to midnight the are just the same. Indeed, I never saw more natural acting than that of these masked players, an art which can only be achieved by an extraordinarily happy nature and long practice.”

[8] Linda Wolk-Simon, Domenico Tiepolo: Drawings, Prints and Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Winter, 1996-1997.

[9] Wolk-Simon, Domenico Tiepolo, 28.

[10] Att. to Tiepolo by Linda Wolk-Simon. "Domenico Tiepolo: Drawings, Prints, and Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 54 (Winter 1996/97), fig. 13.

[11] Linda Wolk-Simon. "Domenico Tiepolo: Drawings, Prints, and Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 54 (Winter 1996/97), pp. 27–30, figs. 42–43 (colour), and ill. on front cover (colour detail), comments that the artist "captured not only the cultural aesthetic of 'villegiatura' [country holiday], but also the very essence of the commedia dell'arte tradition"; identifies the characters in the ranks of the commedia dell'arte as Punchinello, Harlequin, Columbine, Coviello, the Doctor, the Captain, and perhaps Pasquariello, while the pair of lovers on the right were often known as Lelio and Isabella.