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.

Week 7: Painters and Patrons in 18th Century Venice.

Reversing the Trend

G.B. Tiepolo, Alexander the Great and Campaspe in the Studio of Apelles, c. 1740, Getty Museum, Los Angeles, oil on canvas, 16 9/16 x 21 1/4 in.

Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, Allegory of Painting, c. 1730, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, Oil on canvas, 143 x 132 cm

Canaletto, The Piazzetta, looking towards the Torre dell’ Orologia, 1726-8, Royal Collection, oil on canvas, 172.1 134.9 cm

G.B. Piazzetta, Idyll at the Coast, c. 1741, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, Oil on canvas, 197 x 146 cm.

With the popularity of artists like Tiepolo, Fragonard and Boucher, it’s salutary to remember that once this kind of painting full of fantasy and colour, and produced for a rich elite, was attacked by art historians just after the Second World War. Leading the charge was the veteran Italian scholar, Roberto Longhi, who during the age of Italian neo-realism, defended 18^th century genre artists like Longhi whilst dismissing Tiepolo and his rhetorical style.  The trend has been reversed due to publications by Francis Haskell, Michael Levey and others who have worked hard to put Tiepolo and Canaletto in context and offer a less biased summary. Today, Longhi’s criticisms are virtually forgotten, and Tiepolo, the “presiding genius” of the 18^th century (Levey) is celebrated in publications, high profile exhibitions that give the lie to the idea of the 18^th century as a frivolous interval between the main acts of the 17^th and 19^th centuries.  The story of 18^th European art is also one of collecting by foreigners residing in Venice, though Tiepolo himself does not figure much in that story. Two of greatest foreign patrons in Venice, Consul John Smith and Marshall Schulenberg, did not own one Tiepolo. Their taste was completely at variance too: Smith preferred land scape and views; Schulenberg opted for history, portraits and genre.

Rosalba Carriera and the Intimation of Elegance in Venice.

Rosalba Carriera, Self-Portrait holding a portrait of her Sister, 1715, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Pastel on paper, 71 x 57 cm.

Rosalba Carriera, Portrait of the diva Faustina Bordoni Hasse, 1730s, Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice, Pastel on paper.

Marco Ricci, Rehearsal of an Opera showing the competition between the divas Catherine Tofts and Margherita de L'Epine, 1709,Yale Centre for British Art, oil on canvas.

Rosalba Carriera, Gustavus Hamilton (1710–1746), Second Viscount Boyne, in Masquerade Costume, 1730-31, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Pastel on paper, laid down on canvas, 22 1/4 x 16 7/8 in. (56.5 x 42.9 cm)

In his comprehensive and unsurpassed overview of painting and patronage of the Italian baroque, Francis Haskell shows how Venice’s neutrality marked by a long period of peace, served to attract many foreign patrons and scholars, especially the British. This was good news to aspiring artists. To give just one example: Christian Cole, Secretary to the British Ambassador, chanced upon a young Venetian girl, Rosalba Carriera painting snuff-boxes and miniatures on ivory. Cole persuaded her to take up pastel portraits; and within months she was feted and compared to baroque artists of the preceding century.[1] Cole would eventually fall out with the Republic and return to England; he took with him the painters Pellegrini (Rosalba’s brother-in-law) and Marco Ricci, brother of Sebastiano. Collectors from other nations like the Prince Elector of Saxony, later Augustus III of Poland who acquired Carriera’s work and sustained the career of Bernardo Bellotto (Canaletto’s nephew) in Dresden, were typical of the new kind of patron. From France, Pierre Crozat, patron of Watteau, visited Venice and admired Rosalba’s art immensely. Rosalba later went to Paris and was lodged in Crozat’s house where she met Antoine Watteau, the instigator of the rococo, and Hyacinth Rigaud who had softened the formal style of the Grand Siècle portrait. Both expressed their great admiration for Rosalba’s art, and as Haskell rightly says, “She gave a stimulus to a type of elegant yet intimate portraiture”[2] which might be coined as the style label “Venetian rococo”.

Visions and Vedute.

Canaletto, Piazza San Marco: Looking East Across the Central Line, late 1720s, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, oil on canvas, 68.6 x 112.4 cm.

G. B. Tiepolo, Ceiling of the Gesuati Church, Venice.

Canaletto, The Grand Canal from Campo San Vio towards the Bacino, 1729-34, Royal Collection, Oil on canvas, 46 x 77,5 cm.

Canaletto, The Stonemason’s Yard, 1726-30, National Gallery, London, Oil on canvas, 124 x 163 cm.

Anybody casting an eye over the state of Venetian art in the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries might be forgiven for thinking that it fell into two distinctive categories. Firstly, there were the decorations of noble palaces and the ceilings of churches: allegories and apotheoses that might be collectively called the painting of visions, both sacred and secular. Then there was the growing interest in recording views of Venice to satisfy the hunger of collectors and connoisseurs interested in architecture, perspective or eager for a memento of Venice on the Grand Tour: this could be called vedute painting which was touched on in the last course.  The first strand was amply taken care of by artists such as Bambini, Algarotti, Piazzetta, and above all Tiepolo with his decoration of churches like the Scalzi and Gesuati in Venice, as well as canvases for the Palazzo Dolfin. The second was the preserve of artists like Carlevarijs, Guardi and above all Canaletto. Canaletto’s career was boosted by the patronage of another English patron: Joseph Smith who wasn’t a printmaker or an international traveller. A connoisseur and patron of some distinction who spent most of his life in Venice as a partner in a banking firm, Smith is interesting for us as his taste reflects the two backgrounds of English and Venetian which Haskell captures brilliantly in his survey of his life and art patronage. [3]

Consul Smith: An Englishman Abroad. 

Canaletto, The Piazzetta, looking towards the Torre dell’ Orologia, 1726-8, Royal Collection, oil on canvas, 172.1 134.9 cm.

Canaletto, The Piazzetta, looking towards the Torre dell’ Orologia, 1726-7, Royal Collection, pen and brownish black ink over pencil, 25.4 x 18 cm.

 Rosalba Carriera, Winter, c. 1725, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Pastel on grey paper pasted on cardboard, 24 x 19 cm.

Antonio Visentino, Architectural Fantasy, 1764-72, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, Oil on canvas, 130 x 92 cm

Smith established himself as a merchant in 1709 rising to the prestigious, though modestly paid office of British Consul to Venice in 1744. Living in a palace in the English taste on the Grand Canal, Smith entertained many important cultural luminaries; he was an avid devotee of opera and theatre, and married the controversial opera singer Catherine Tofts. The celebrated dramatist Goldoni wrote a play about him and entitled it, perhaps with some irony: Il Filosofo Inglese. Walpole sarcastically dubbed him “The Merchant of Venice” and he appears to have been generally disliked. Yet he was an ardent collector who started in the 1720s with works by Sebastiano Ricci at a time when Tiepolo was virtually unknown and his tutor Lazzarini had retired. Smith also owned a series of works by Veronese, probably acquired as a section of his studio, but as yet there was nothing from which an individual taste might be inferred. In the 1720s Smith also patronised Rosalba Carriera who was working for him by 1723.  His collection contained pastel portraits by her including a portrait of a young woman called “Winter.”[4] By 1730- when Smith was 55- he had an impressive, though stylistically unremarkable collection, consisting of Sebastiano and Marco Ricci, Carlo Cignani (Bologna), Rosalba, and possibly some Piazzetta. However, the direction of Smith’s collection completely changes with Canaletto’s arrival on the scene in the 1720s. 

Views of Canaletto’s  Views of Venice.

Antonio Visentini (after G.B. Piazzetta), Portrait of Giovanni Antonio Canal, called Canaletto, before 1735, Royal Collection, Windsor, Engraving.

Antonio Visentino, Album, plate 11: view of the Grand Canal from the Carmelitani Scalzi to the Tintore Molin, British Museum, pen and brown ink.

Piazzetta (?), Design for the frontispiece of an album with bust portraits of Canaletto and Visentini in ovals set into an elaborate frame, 1735-42, British Museum,  Pen and brown ink

Francesco Guardi, Night-time Procession in Piazza San Marco, 1758, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Oil on canvas, 48 x 85 cm.

Giovanni Antonio Canal was born in Venice, near the Rialto on 28^th October, 1697, the son of a theatrical painter. Why and when he was named Canaletto, “the little canal” is not known.[5] Nor is it documented if Canaletto met the founder of the vedute school of Venetian painting, Carlevarijs, but an encounter seems highly likely since the latter painted the Rialto. Canaletto was first introduced to English collectors by an Irishman, Owen McSwiney, who was a friend of the artist’s major patron Joseph Smith. In 1730, Smith emerged in the role he played for many years: “the purveyor of Canaletto’s work to the English visitor in Venice.”[6] Smith’s collection of Canalettos would comprise the following: 49 paintings, 143 drawings, and 46 etchings. These went to George III and thence into the Royal Collection and these are the most significant holdings of Canaletto today. [7] The banker’s first Canalettos were six views of San Marco, “impressionistic” in style, which some would say were his finest works rather than the later paintings for which he is better known.  In fact as Haskell observed, critics and connoisseurs in England were surprised in the stylistic difference between the pictures Canaletto painted in Venice (which they deemed better) and those figurative paintings of English locations executed in a dry manner.[8] With the outbreak of the War of the Austrian Succession in 1741 making travel difficult, demand for Canaletto’s art fell, though the English could not complain they didn’t have enough of his art on their walls! Canaletto also had to contend with rivals like Marieschi and Guardi who also specialised in Venetian vedute. Interestingly, though Guardi’s atmospheric, sketchy style might have met with the approval of these English critics envious of Canaletto’s early phase, in their eyes Guardi failed to measure up against the veteran view painter despite his “romanticism.” For these connoisseurs, Guardi lacked the accuracy of Canaletto which helped to perpetuate a stereotypical view of the latter only to be modified near the end of the 19^th century.[9]  

Marshall Schulenberg: A Soldier in Venice.

1.       Gian Antonio Guardi, Count Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg, 1740, location unknown, oil on canvas.

G. B. Piazzetta, “Feeding the Dog”, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, black chalk, highlighted with white chalk, on blue-gray paper faded to brown, 5-1/2 x 20-9/16 in. (39.3 x 52.3 cm)

G.B. Tiepolo, Portrait of Daniele IV Dolfin, 1750s, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice, Oil on canvas, 235 x 158 cm.

1.       G.B. Tiepolo, The Triumph of Marius, 1725-29, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 558.8 x 326.7 cm. 

  As should be obvious by now, scenes of classical battles serve as propaganda on the victory of the Venetian republic against its enemies, ranging from the League of Cambrai to the Ottoman Empire. This use of history painting as a form of allegorical promotion continues into the 18^th century, and unsurprisingly, it is Tiepolo with which it is most associated. At the culmination of the first stage of Tiepolo’s career, he painted a cycle of 10 canvases on Roman subjects for the Dolfin family, initially installed in their palace on the Grand Canal, and now dispersed to museums in St Petersburg (5), Vienna (2) and New York (3).[10] Given the specific achievements of the Dolfin and their part in the wars with the Turks it seems fair to assume that a parallel is meant where Rome and Carthage stand for Venice and the Ottoman Empire.  After Tiepolo, the best example of scenes drawn from Greek and Roman history in Venice are the works of Pittoni who produced such paintings as the Sacrifice of Polyxena for his patron Marshall Schulenberg who after a distinguished military career fighting for Saxony, retired to Venice.  The Marshall also had a taste for Flemish and Dutch art; he commissioned naturalistic paintings from Piazzetta and owned paintings by Ceruti; these were full of beggars, urchins, and dogs- quite a visual challenge to the audience of a city raised on mythologies and history painting.

Slides.

1.       G.B. Tiepolo, Alexander the Great and Campaspe in the Studio of Apelles, c. 1740, Getty Museum, Los Angeles, oil on canvas, 16 9/16 x 21 1/4 in.
2.       Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, Allegory of Painting, c. 1730, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, Oil on canvas, 143 x 132 cm.[11]
3.       Rosalba Carriera, Self-Portrait holding a portrait of her Sister, 1715, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Pastel on paper, 71 x 57 cm.
4.       Pietro Antonio Rotari, King Augustus III of Poland, 1755, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden, Oil on canvas, 108 x 86 cm.
5.       Rosalba Carriera, Gustavus Hamilton (1710–1746), Second Viscount Boyne, in Masquerade Costume, 1730-31, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Pastel on paper, laid down on canvas, 22 1/4 x 16 7/8 in. (56.5 x 42.9 cm).[12]
6.       Rosalba Carriera, Portrait of the diva Faustina Bordoni Hasse, 1730s, Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice, Pastel on paper.
7.       Marco Ricci, Rehearsal of an Opera showing the competition between the divas Catherine Tofts and Margherita de L'Epine, 1709,Yale Centre for British Art, oil on canvas.[13]
8.       Domingo Antonio Velasco, Portrait of Domenico Scarlatti, 1738, oil on canvas, location unknown.[14]
9.       Rosalba Carriera, Winter, c. 1725, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Pastel on grey paper pasted on cardboard, 24 x 19 cm
10.   Jacopo Amigoni, Portrait of a Lady, 1729-39, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Black, white, and red chalk, with pastel on brownish paper, 11 7/16 x 9 5/8 in. (29.0 x 24.5 cm).[15]
11.   G.B. Tiepolo, Woman with a Parrot, 1760-61, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Oil on canvas.
12.   Antonio Visentini (after G.B. Piazzetta), Portrait of Giovanni Antonio Canal, called Canaletto, before 1735, Royal Collection, Windsor, Engraving.
13.   Canaletto, The Stonemason’s Yard, 1726-30, National Gallery, London, Oil on canvas, 124 x 163 cm.[16]
14.   Canaletto, Piazza San Marco: Looking East Across the Central Line, late 1720s, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, oil on canvas, 68.6 x 112.4 cm.[17]
15.   Canaletto, The Piazzetta, looking towards the Torre dell’ Orologia, 1726-8, Royal Collection, oil on canvas, 172.1 134.9 cm.[18]
16.   Canaletto, The Piazzetta, looking towards the Torre dell’ Orologia, 1726-7, Royal Collection, pen and brownish black ink over pencil, 25.4 x 18 cm.[19]
17.   Canaletto, The Grand Canal from Campo San Vio towards the Bacino, 1729-34, Royal Collection, Oil on canvas, 46 x 77,5 cm.[20]
18.   Canaletto, The Grand Canal with the Scalzi and S. Simeone Piccolo, oil on canvas, National Gallery, London, 1730s, oil on canvas, 124.5 x 204.6 cm.[21]
19.   Antonio Visentino, Album, plate 11: view of the Grand Canal from the Carmelitani Scalzi to the Tintore Molin Pen and brown ink.
20.   Photograph of the Scalzi Church on the Grand Canal, DP, 2010.
21.   Piazzetta (?), Design for the frontispiece of an album with bust portraits of Canaletto and Visentini in ovals set into an elaborate frame, 1735-42, British Museum,  Pen and brown ink
22.   Antonio Visentino, Architectural Fantasy, 1764-72, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, Oil on canvas, 130 x 92 cm.[22]
23.   Francesco Guardi, Night-time Procession in Piazza San Marco, 1758, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Oil on canvas, 48 x 85 cm.
24.   Palazzo Dolfin, now part of University of Venice.
25.   G.B. Tiepolo, The Triumph of Marius, 1725-29, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, irregular painted surface, Irregular painted surface, 558.8 x 326.7 cm.
26.   G.B. Tiepolo, The Capture of Carthage, 1725-29, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 411.5 x 376.9 cm.
27.   G.B. Tiepolo, Portrait of Daniele IV Dolfin, 1750s, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice, Oil on canvas, 235 x 158 cm.
28.   Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, Turkish Lancer and Onlookers Approaching a Town, c. 1760, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, pen and brown ink, brush and pale brown wash, over black chalk; framing outlines by the artist in pen and brown ink, 8 x 24 in. (45.7 x 61 cm) sheet: 11 1/4 x 16 3/16 in. (28.5 x 41.1 cm).[23]
29.   Gian Antonio Guardi, Count Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg, 1740, location unknown, oil on canvas.
30.   Giambattista Pittoni, The Sacrifice of Polyxena, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Oil on canvas, 129 x 94 cm.
31.   Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, The Head of Pompey Presented to Julius Caesar (recto); Study for an Elaborate Door Frame (verso), Pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, over red and black chalk; traces of white chalk at upper right edge (recto); pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, over black chalk; and another black chalk sketch (verso), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,  28.7 x 37.3 cm.[24]
32.   Johann Gottfried Haid, Portrait of Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, early 18^th century, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, mezzotint.
33.   G.B. Piazzetta, Idyll at the Coast, c. 1741, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, Oil on canvas, 197 x 146 cm.
34.   G. B. Piazzetta, “Feeding the Dog”, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, black chalk, highlighted with white chalk, on blue-gray paper faded to brown, 5-1/2 x 20-9/16 in. (39.3 x 52.3 cm).[25]
35.   G. Ceruiti, Evening at the Piazza, c. 1730, Museo Civico d'Arte Antica, Palazzo Madama, Turin, Oil on canvas, 210 x 298 cm.[26]

---

[1] Haskell, Patrons and Painters: Art and Society in Baroque Italy, (Yale University Press, 1980), 277.

[2] Ibid., 285.

[3] On Smith, see Suzanne Boorsch, Venetian Prints and Books in the Age of Tiepolo, exh, cat., MMA, New York, 2007, 15f; Haskell, Patrons and Painters, 297ff.

[4] Described by Smith (cited in Haskell, 303): “Beautiful female covering herself with a Pelisse allowed to be the most excellent this Virtuosa ever painted.”

[5] See J. G. Links: “Canaletto: A Biographical Sketch”, MMA, 3-15.

[6] Links, Canaletto, 6.

[7] See the exhibition catalogue for the Canaletto exhibition, (MMA, New York, 1989), Katharine Baetjer and J. G. Links and essays by Francis Haskell and Michael Levey and others. See also the earlier catalogue of the exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery: Canaletto, Paintings and Drawings, 1980-81. 

[8] Haskell, “The Taste for Canaletto” in MMA, . In Haskell’s words: “[the difference] from the bold, fresh, dramatic touch of his earlier works to his later more mannered, dry, calligraphic bland manner..”   

[9] Haskell: “..an awareness of Guardi served primarily to reinforce the stereotype of Canaletto as an absolutely faithful delineator of his native city.” Revaluations of Canaletto as a painter of other than purely topographical views in favour seem to begin with Henry James in 1892, as noted by Haskell. James said that he who emerged from the railway station “seemed to have a Canaletto before him.”

[10] For the complex story of how three of these Dolfin pictures came to New York, see Keith Christiansen, “The Ca’ Dolfin Tiepolos”, Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Spring, 1998. See Tiepolo catalogue, 12a to 12g.

[11] Accademia Guide no 202. Prov: 1959 from Count Alvise Guistiniani; last restored 1959. Compared to the pastels of his sister-in-law Rosalba Carriera.

[12] From Met web site: “Gustavus Hamilton was Irish, born in 1710, and succeeded his grandfather in 1723 as second Viscount Boyne. This elegant young gentleman made his Grand Tour of the continent with Edward Walpole (1706–1784), the second son of the powerful Whig Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole (1676–1745). The two were in Venice from late January to March 1730, doubtless for the Carnival season, and Boyne was there again the following winter. There are three versions of the present portrait by Rosalba: the second (private collection) shows the sitter in an identical costume, while the third (Barber Institute of Arts, University of Birmingham, England) shows him wearing a brown brocaded coat. All three would have resulted from the sittings for whichever pastel was painted first and all probably date within a year. The entire costume, tricorne hat, lace veil, and mask, worn outdoors with a black coat, is known to Venetians as the bautta and offered its wearer the advantage of anonymity; it was worn by both residents and visitors to the lagoon city.”

[13] After performing at Venice between 1698–1700, de L'Epine arrived at London in 1702, as the mistress of Jakob Greber, although rumours of an affair (1703) with Daniel Finch, the Earl of Nottingham, indicate that she did not remain exclusive in her affections for very long. In these early London years she danced as well as sang, performing at Drury Lane from 1704–1708, and then at the Queen's Theatre from 1708-1714. Her repertoire initially consisted of songs and cantatas by such diverse composers as Henry Purcell and Alessandro Scarlatti, but from 1706 she starred in such Italian operas as began to appear on London stages at this time, the most popular being Giovanni Bononcini's Camilla, in which she replaced Catherine Tofts at the fourth performance, singing the role of the heroine.

[14] Domingo Antonio Velasco was an Italian painter. He was best known for his portrait of composer Domenico Scarlatti,which commemorates the dubbing of Domenico into the Order of Santiago on 21 April 1738 by King John V of Portugal.[2]

[15] George Szabo, Eighteenth-Century Italian from the Robert Lehmann Collection, MMA, New York, 1981, no. 1. Szabo dates it to the 1740s and thinks the drawing could actually be by Amigoni’s daughter.

[16] Canaletto, New York, 1989, no. 32.

[17] Canaletto, New York, 1989, no. 27.

[18] Canaletto, London, 1981, no. 1: Canaletto, New York, 1989, no. 28.

[19] Canaletto, New York, 1989, no. 88.

[20] Canaletto, London, 1981, no. 11.

[21] Beq. By Lord Farnborough, 1838.

[22] Accademia Guide, no. 308. Exh 1777, influenced by Panini; Acq 1807 fr Old Acdemy of Venice.

[23] 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. 261, fig. no. 261, pp. 262-63, ill. See also Linda Wolk-Simon "Domenico Tiepolo. Drawings, Prints, and Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art." the Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, vol. 54, no. 3, New York, Winter 1996-1997, fig. no. 80, p. 53, ill.

[24] Bean and Griswold 18th Century Italian Drawings, cat. no. 156.

[25] Bean and Griswold 18th Century Italian Drawings, cat. no. 161, fig. no. 161, pp. 171-72.

[26] Ceruti was one of the so-called Lombard Painters of Reality (i.e. low-life). He is now known to have been born in Milan, where he died, but by 1721 he was in Brescia, and his earliest work (1724) is a signed portrait of a Brescian patrician: his portraits are influenced by his elder contemporary Ghislandi. He frescoed the staircase of the Palazzo Grassi in Venice c. 1470 and was back in Milan by 1757. His present fame is based on his groups of working-class sitters, ranging from lacemakers to destitute vagabonds, painted in a technique similar to Ghislandi's, but the subject-matter is far closer to the Le Nain brothers, and ultimately derived from Caravaggio's realism. His nickname in Italy is Pitocchetto, the Little Miser. None of his works is dated, and few are yet in museums.