Baroque and Rococo

 

Baroque and Rococo Art Map

Marco Ricci

Luca Carlevaris




see collection:


Bernardo Bellotto


 

Townscapes: The Venetian School


While large-scale paintings in the "grand manner" were still popular in the 18th century, less spectacular works, much more modest in size and subject, were also sought after for personal enjoyment.
Views (vedutas), usually of townscapes, accounted for a large share of this market, and were bought as souvenirs of the Grand Tour. The great European cities were gradually adopted as suitable subjects for paintings, usually in the form of panoramic views or close-ups of sites noted for their monuments or beauty. In every large city, workshops specializing in these townscapes proliferated. Venice produced some superb painters of this genre, following earlier examples by Marco Ricci (1676-1729) and Luca Carlevaris (1667-1730) who both attempted to apply what they had learned from the Roman school and the Dutch landscape masters. Venetian townscape painting (vedutismo) developed its own style and manner, distinct from the landscape painting of other regions.
The most notable examples were by Canaletto (1697-1768), Bernardo Bellotto (1721-80), and Francesco Guardi (1712-93). Having initially worked as a scene painter with his father, Canaletto then furthered his artistic education in Rome. He returned to Venice in about 1720 and started to produce accurate portrayals of his native city from real life, although he later painted from drawings. His highly original method of working, the meticulous attention to detail, the descriptive accuracy of his figures, and his breadth and range of perspective make his work all the more appealing. For composition and accuracy. Canaletto used a camera obscura, (an apparatus with which images are projected onto a flat surface by a convex lens in an aperture) to help him capture wide-angle views on canvas. Resorting to such technical aids in no way compromised the artist's skill at handling light, or the immediacy of his figures, which were brought to life by a few brushstrokes. Canaletto painted a very wide range of views, often repeating a subject but always varying his treatment of it. His style, therefore, is easily identifiable despite the fact that many others worked with similar subjects. The artist's work met with immediate success, the English elite proving to be the most enthusiastic-patrons. Canaletto moved to England in 1746 and. for the next ten years, painted numerous landscapes, townscapes, and views of country houses. During this time, a change in his range of colour became noticeable. Canaletto's nephew. Bernardo Bellotto, also a painter, emulated his themes and treatment of perspective, but used a colder, darker palette and gave his scenes a more polished, lively quality. After painting many Italian townscapes and landscapes (among them his famous view of Gazzada near Varese), Bellotto left Italy and went to Dresden in 1747, and also visited various cities in central Europe. He painted some very fine and meticulously accurate views of Warsaw. The Venetian artist Francesco Guardi, one of a large family of painters, also specialized in townscapes and returned to some of the subjects and settings first painted by Canaletto. He interpreted them in a very different way. working with extremely light and rapid brushstrokes and producing scenes crowded with figures, some just barely sketched. His works stand apart for their dynamism and vitality and. on occasion, they evoked a haunting melancholy. Although best known for his view painting, Guardi later created imaginary scenes, or capricci. that sought to convey emotion and atmosphere rather than document real life. Of all the townscape painters. Guardi is most closely identified with the spirit of the Rococo. As the style gradually gave way to Neoclassicism, however, Guardi evolved as a painter and his work went on to inspire many of the more introspective 19th-century artists, who preferred to express their own. personal emotions and anisic outlooks, rather than to be content with strictly descriptive and objective painting.
 

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Marco Ricci

(b Belluno, 5 June 1676; d 21 Jan 1730).

Painter, printmaker and stage designer, nephew of Sebastiano Ricci. He probably began his career in Venice in the late 1690s as his uncle’s pupil, concentrating on history paintings (untraced). Having murdered a gondolier in a tavern brawl, he fled to Split in Dalmatia, where he remained for four years and was apprenticed to a landscape painter (Temanza, 1738). Once back in Venice (c. 1700) he put this training to use in painting theatrical scenery. Little is known about his early development, and it remains difficult to establish a chronology for his work. A group of restless, romantic landscapes (examples, Leeds, Temple Newsam House; Padua, Mus. Civ.), painted with lively, free strokes and formerly thought to represent his early period, have now been convincingly attributed (Moretti) to Antonio Marini (1668–1725). His earliest dated works, a tempera painting, View with Classical Ruins (1702), and a Landscape with Fishermen (1703; ex-Kupferstichkab., Berlin; untraced), are serene and classical, close in style to tempera paintings generally dated 1710–30. This suggests that Ricci’s style did not develop much, and that strong classicizing tendencies, indebted to Nicolas Poussin, were present from the start. The Landscape with Fishermen derives from the Venetian tradition of Titian and Domenico Campagnola and suggests that a group of other drawings—panoramic views in pen and brown ink, executed with tight hatching—may be dated early. The work of Pieter Mulier (c. 1637–1701), whom Ricci probably knew, was another formative influence, as can be seen in two stormy landscape paintings (Warsaw, N. Mus.) that echo Mulier’s style. The work of Salvator Rosa, Joseph Heintz II and Johann Eisman (1604–98) encouraged the more romantic aspect of his art.

 

Marco Ricci
Landscape with River and Figures
c. 1720
Oil on canvas, 136 x 197 cm
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice


 

Marco Ricci
Landscape with Watering Horses
c. 1720
Oil on canvas, 136 x 198 cm
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice


 

Marco Ricci
Landscape with Washerwomen
c. 1720
Oil on canvas, 136 x 198 cm
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice



 

Marco Ricci
Coastal View with Tower
1715-20
Oil on canvas, 106,7 x 148,6 cm
Private collection
 

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Luca Carlevaris

(b Udine, 20 Jan 1663; d Venice, 12 Feb 1730).

Italian painter, engraver and architect. ‘The first of any note who painted views of Venice’ was how he was described in 1789 by John Strange (sale catalogue, London, 10 Dec), the British Resident in Venice from 1773. Although Carlevaris was more than simply a view painter, much of his work was certainly in the genre later made popular by Canaletto and Francesco Guardi. Carlevaris’s artistic inclinations were probably inherited from his father, a painter and designer who died when his son was very young. In 1679 Carlevaris moved to Venice and was discovered by the Zenobio family, whose palace was near where he lived. He is said to have made a trip to Rome, from which he returned to Venice in 1698, and while there must have become aware of view paintings and capricci by artists such as Gaspar van Wittel (Vanvitelli). On his return he established himself by painting similar works (e.g. Seaport and Piazzetta; both Udine, Mus. Civ.). In 1703 he published Le fabriche e vedute di Venezia disegnate poste in prospettiva et intagliate da Luca Carlevaris: 104 views of Venice. It was the most complete survey of the fabric of the city ever produced and served as a model for Venetian view painters throughout the 18th century.
 

Luca Carlevaris
Seascape
1690s
Oil on canvas, 147,5 x 179 cm
Private collection


 

Luca Carlevaris
The Sea Custom House with San Giorgio Maggiore
1700s
Oil on canvas, 50 x 96 cm
Private collection


 

Luca Carlevaris
The Reception of Cardinal Cesar d'Estrees
1701
Oil on canvas, 130 x 260 cm
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam


 

Luca Carlevaris
The Wharf, Looking toward the Doge's Palace
Oil on canvas, 73,4 x 117,4
Schloss Sans-Souci, Potsdam


 

Luca Carlevaris
Piazza San Marco with Jugglers
Oil on canvas, 73,2 x 117,2
Schloss Sans-Souci, Potsdam


 

Luca Carlevaris
The Molo with the Ducal Palace
c. 1710
Oil on canvas, 70 x 118 cm
Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Palazzo Corsini, Rome


 

Luca Carlevaris
The Bridge for the Feast of the Madonna della Salute
1720
Oil on canvas, 117 x 148 cm
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford


 

Luca Carlevaris
View of the Wharf from the Bacino di San Marco
1720s
Oil on canvas, 85,7 x 163,8 cm
Private collection


 

Luca Carlevaris
The Piazzetta and the Library
1720s
Oil on canvas, 46 x 39 cm
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford