The Venetian School of Painting Part 19

Ca.n.a.lE

While Piazetta and Tiepolo were proving themselves the inheritors of the great school of decorators, Venice herself was finding her chroniclers, and a school of landscape arose, of which Ca.n.a.le was the foremost member. Giovanni Antonio Ca.n.a.le was born in Venice in 1697, the same year as Tiepolo. His father earned his living at the profession, lucrative enough just then, of scene-painting, and Antonio learned to handle his brush, working at his side. In 1719 he went off to seek his fortune in Rome, and though he was obliged to help out his resources by his early trade, he was most concerned in the study of architecture, ancient and modern. Rome spoke to him through the eye, by the picturesque ma.s.ses of stonework, the warm harmonious tones of cla.s.sic remains and the effects of light upon them. He painted almost entirely out-of-doors, and has left many examples drawn from the ruins. His success in Rome was not remarkable, and he was still a very young man when he retraced his steps. On regaining his native town, he realised for the first time the beauty of its ca.n.a.ls and palaces, and he never again wavered in his allegiance.

Two rivals were already in the field, Luca Carlevaris, whose works were freely bought by the rich Venetians, and Marco Ricci, the figures in whose views of Venice were often touched in by his uncle, Sebastiano; but Ca.n.a.le's growing fame soon dethroned them, "i cacciati del nido," as he said, using Dante's expression. In a generation full of caprice, delighting in sensational developments, Ca.n.a.le was methodical to a fault, and worked steadily, calmly producing every detail of Venetian landscape with untiring application and almost monotonous tranquillity.

He lived in the midst of a band of painters who adored travel.

Sebastiano Ricci was always on the move; Tiepolo spent much of his time in other cities and countries, and pa.s.sed the last years of his life in Spain; Pietro Rotari was attached to the Court of St. Petersburg; Belotto, Ca.n.a.le's nephew, settled in Bohemia; but Ca.n.a.le remained at home, and, except for two short visits paid to England, contented himself with trips to Padua and Verona.

Early in life Ca.n.a.le entered into relations with Joseph Smith, the British Consul in Venice, a connoisseur who had not only formed a fine collection of pictures, but had a gallery from which he was very ready to sell to travellers. He bought of the young Venetian at a very low price, and contrived, unfairly enough, to acquire the right to all his work for a certain period of time, with the object of sending it, at a good profit, to London. For a time Ca.n.a.le's luminous views were bought by the English under these auspices, but the artist, presently discovering that he was making a bad bargain, came over to England, where he met with an encouraging reception, especially at Windsor Castle and from the Duke of Richmond. Ca.n.a.le spent two years in England and painted on the Thames and at Cambridge, but he could not stand the English climate and fled from the damp and fogs to his own lagoons.

To describe his paintings is to describe Venice at every hour of the day and night--Venice with its long array of n.o.ble palaces, with its Grand Ca.n.a.l and its narrow, picturesque waterways. He reproduces the Venice we know, and we see how little it has changed. The gondolas cl.u.s.ter round the landing-stages of the Piazzetta, the crowds hurry in and out of the arcades of the Ducal Palace, or he paints the festivals that still retained their splendour: the Great Bucentaur leaving the Riva dei Schiavoni on the Feast of the Ascension, or San Geremia and the entrance to the Cannaregio decked in flags for a feast-day. From one end to another of the Grand Ca.n.a.l, that "most beautiful street in the world,"

as des Commines called it in 1495, we can trace every aspect of Ca.n.a.le's time, when the city had as yet lost nothing of its splendour or its animation. At the entrance stands S. Maria della Salute, that sanctuary dear to Venetian hearts, built as a votive offering after the visitation of the plague in 1631. Its flamboyant dome, with its volutes, its population of stone saints, its green bronze door catching the light, pleased Ca.n.a.le, as it pleased Sargent in our own day, and he painted it over and over again. The annual fete of the Confraternity of the Carita takes place at the Scuola di San Rocco, and Ca.n.a.le paints the old Renaissance building which shelters so much of Tintoretto's finest work, decorated with ropes of greenery and gay with flags,[7] while Tiepolo has put in the red-robed, periwigged councillors and the gazing populace. Near it in the National Gallery hangs a "Regatta" with its array of boats, its shouting gondoliers, and its shadows lying across the range of palaces, and telling the exact hour of the day that it was sketched in; or, again, the painter has taken peculiar pleasure in expressing quiet days, with calm green waters and wide empty piazzas, divided by sun and shadow, with a few citizens plodding about their business in the hot midday, or a quiet little abbe crossing the piazza on his way to Ma.s.s. Ca.n.a.le has made a special study of the light on wall and facade, and of the transparent waters of the ca.n.a.ls and the azure skies in which float great snowy fleeces.

[7] It is thought that it may have been painted from his studio.

His second visit to England was paid in 1751. He was received with open arms by the great world, and invited to the houses of the n.o.bility in town and country. The English were delighted with his taste and with the mastery with which he painted architectural scenes, and in spite of advancing years he produced a number of compositions, which commanded high prices. The Garden of Vauxhall, the Rotunda at Ranelagh, Whitehall, Northumberland House, Eton College, were some of the subjects which attracted him, and the treatment of which was signalised by his calm and perfect balance. He made use of the camera ottica, which is in princ.i.p.al identical with the camera oscura. Lanzi says he amended its defects and taught its proper use, but it must be confessed that in the careful perspective of some of his scenes, its traces seem to haunt us and to convey a certain cold regularity. Ca.n.a.le was a marvellous engraver.

Mantegna, Bellini, and t.i.tian had placed engraving on a very high level in the Venetian School, and though at a later date it became too elaborate, Tiepolo and his son brought it back to simplicity. Ca.n.a.le aided them, and his _eaux-fortes_, of which he has left about thirty, are filled with light and breadth of treatment, and he is particularly happy in his brilliant, transparent water.

The high prices Ca.n.a.le obtained for his pictures in his lifetime led to the usual imitations. He was surrounded by painters whose whole ambition was limited to copying him. Among these were Marieschi, Visentini, Colombini, besides others now forgotten. More than fifty of his finest works were bought by Smith for George III. and fill a room at Windsor.

He was made a member of the Academy at Dresden, and Bruhl, the Prime Minister of the Elector, obtained from him twenty-one works which now adorn the gallery there. Ca.n.a.le died in Venice, where he had lived nearly all his life, and where his gondola-studio was a familiar object in the Piazzetta, at the Lido, or anch.o.r.ed in the long ca.n.a.ls.

His nephew, Bernardo Belotto, is often also called Ca.n.a.letto, and it seems that both uncle and nephew were equally known by the diminutive.

Belotto, too, went to Rome early in his career, where he attached himself to Panini, a painter of cla.s.sic ruins, peopled with warriors and shepherds. He was, by all accounts, full of vanity and self-importance, and on a visit to Germany managed to acquire the t.i.tle of Count, which he adhered to with great complacency. He travelled all over Italy looking for patronage, and was very eager to find the road to success and fortune. About the same time as his uncle, he paid a visit to London and was patronised by Horace Walpole, but in the full tide of success he was summoned to Dresden, where the Elector, disappointed at not having secured the services of the uncle, was fain to console himself with those of the nephew. The extravagant and profligate Augustus II., whose one idea was to extract money by every possible means from his subjects, in order to adorn his palaces, was consistently devoted to Belotto, who was in his element as a Court painter. He paints all his uncle's subjects, and it is not always easy to distinguish between the two; but his paintings are dull and stiff as compared with those of Ca.n.a.le, though he is sometimes fine in colour, and many of his views are admirably drawn.

SOME WORKS OF Ca.n.a.lE

It is impossible to draw up any exhaustive list, so many being in private collections.

Dresden. The Grand Ca.n.a.l; Campo S. Giacomo; Piazza S. Marco; Church and Piazza of SS. Giovanni and Paolo.

Florence. The Piazzetta.

Hampton Court. The Colosseum.

London. Scuola di San Rocco; Interior of the Rotunda at Ranelagh; S. Pietro in Castello, Venice.

Paris. Louvre: Church of S. Maria della Salute.

Venice. Heading; Courtyard of a Palace.

Vienna. Liechtenstein Gallery: Church and Piazza of S. Mark, Venice; Ca.n.a.l of the Giudecca, Venice; View on Grand Ca.n.a.l; The Piazzetta.

Windsor. About fifty paintings.

Wallace Collection. The Giudecca; Piazza San Marco; Church of San Simione; S. Maria della Salute; A Fete on the Grand Ca.n.a.l; Ducal Palace; Dogana from the Molo; Palazzo Corner; A Water-fete; The Rialto; S. Maria della Salute; A Ca.n.a.l in Venice.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

FRANCESCO GUARDI

An entry in Gradenigo's diary of 1764, preserved in the Museo Correr, speaks of "Francesco Guardi, painter of the quarter of SS. Apostoli, along the Fondamenta Nuove, a good pupil of the famous Ca.n.a.letto, having by the aid of the camera ottica, most successfully painted two canvases (not small) by the order of a stranger (an Englishman), with views of the Piazza San Marco, towards the Church and the Clock Tower, and of the Bridge of the Rialto and buildings towards the Cannaregio, and have to-day examined them under the colonnades of the Procurazie and met with universal applause."

Francesco Guardi was a son of the Austrian Tyrol, and his mountain ancestry may account, as in the case of t.i.tian, for the freshness and vigour of his art. Both his father, who settled in Venice, and his brother were painters. His son became one in due time, and the profession being followed by four members of the family accounts for the indifferent works often attributed to Guardi.

His indebtedness to Ca.n.a.le is universally acknowledged, and perhaps it is true that he never attains to the monumental quality, the traditional dignity which marks Ca.n.a.le out as a great master, but he differs from Ca.n.a.le in temperament, style, and technique. Ca.n.a.le is a much more exact and serious student of architectural detail; Guardi, with greater visible vigour, obliterates detail, and has no hesitation in drawing in buildings which do not really appear. In his oval painting of the Ducal Palace (Wallace Collection) he makes it much loftier and more s.p.a.cious than it really is. In his "Piazzetta" he puts in a corner of the Loggia where it would not actually be seen. In the "Fair in Piazza S. Marco"

the arch from under which the Fair appears is gigantic, and he foreshortens the wing of the royal palace. He curtails the length of the columns in the piazza and so avoids monotony of effect, and he often alters the height of the campaniles he uses, making them tall and slender or short and broad, as his picture requires. At one time he produced some colossal pictures, in several of which Mr. Simonson, who has written an admirable life of the painter, believes that the hand of Ca.n.a.le is perceptible in collaboration; but it was not his natural element, and he often became heavy in colour and handling. In 1782 he undertook a commission from Pietro Edwards, who was a noted connoisseur and inspector of State pictures, and had been appointed superintendent in 1778 of an official studio for the restoration of old masters.

Edwards had important dealings with Guardi, who was directed to paint four leading incidents in the rejoicings in honour of the visit of Pius IV. to Venice. The Venetians themselves had become indifferent patrons of art, but Venice attracted great numbers of foreign visitors, and before the second half of the eighteenth century the export of old masters had already become an established trade. There is no sign, however, that Joseph Smith, who retained his consuls.h.i.+p till 1760, extended any patronage to Guardi, though he enriched George III.'s collection with works of the chief contemporary artists of Venice. It is probable that Guardi had been warned against him by Ca.n.a.le and profited by the latter's experience.

We can divide his work into three categories. 1. Views of Venice. 2.

Public ceremonies. 3. Landscapes. Gradenigo mentions casually that he used the camera ottica, but though we may consider it probable, we cannot trace the use of it in his works. He is not only a painter of architecture, but pays great attention to light and atmosphere, and aims at subtle effects; a transparent haze floats over the lagoons, or the sun pierces though the morning mists. His four large pendants in the Wallace Collection show his happiest efforts; light glances off the water and is reflected on the shadowed walls. His views round the Salute bring vividly before us those delicious morning hours in Venice when the green tide has just raced up the Grand Ca.n.a.l, when a fresh wind is lifting and curling all the loose sails and fluttering pennons, and when the gondoliers are straining at the oars, as their light craft is caught and blown from side to side upon the rippling water. The sky occupies much of his s.p.a.ce, he makes searching studies of it, and his favourite effect is a flash of light shooting across a piled-up ma.s.s of clouds.

The line of the horizon is low, and he exhibits great mastery in painting the wide lagoons, but he also paints rough seas, and is one of the few masters of his day--perhaps the only one--who succeeds in representing a storm at sea.

Often as he paints the same subjects he never becomes mechanical or photographic. We may sometimes tire of the monotony of Ca.n.a.le's unerring perspective and accurate buildings, but Guardi always finds some new rendering, some fresh point of interest. Sometimes he gives us a summer day, when Venice stands out in light, her white palaces reflected in the sun-illumined water; sometimes he is arrested by old churches bathed in shadow and fusing into the rich, dark tones of twilight. His boats and figures are introduced with great spirit and _brio_, and are alive with that handling which a French critic has described as his _griffe endiablee_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Francesco Guardi._ S. MARIA DELLA SALUTE.

_London._ (_Photo, Mansell and Co._)]

His masterly and spirited painting of crowds enables him to reproduce for us all those public ceremonies which Venice retained as long as the Republic lasted: yearly pilgrimages of the Doge to Venetian churches, to the Salute to commemorate the cessation of the plague, to San Zaccaria on Easter Day, the solemn procession on Corpus Christi Day, receptions of amba.s.sadors, and, most gorgeous of all, the Feast of the Wedding of the Adriatic. He has faithfully preserved the ancient ceremonial which accompanied State festivities. In the "Fete du Jeudi Gras" (Louvre) he ill.u.s.trates the acrobatic feats which were performed before Doge Mocenigo. A huge Temple of Victory is erected on the Piazzetta, and gondoliers are seen climbing on each other's shoulders and dancing upon ropes. His motley crowds show that the whole population, patricians as well as people, took part in the feasts. He has also left many striking interiors: among others, that of the Sala del Gran Consiglio, where sometimes as many as a thousand persons were a.s.sembled, the "Reception of the Doge and Senate by Pius IV." (which formed one of the series ordered by Pietro Edwards), or the fine "Interior of a Theatre,"

exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts in 1911, belonging to a series of which another is at Munich.

In his landscapes Guardi does not pay very faithful attention to nature.

The landscape painters of the eighteenth century, as Mr. Simonson points out, were not animated by any very genuine impulse to study nature minutely. It was the picturesque element which appealed to them, and they were chiefly concerned to reproduce romantic features, grouped according to fancy. Guardi composes half fantastic scenes, introducing cla.s.sic remains, triumphal arches, airy Palladian monuments. His _capricci_ include compositions in which Roman ruins, overgrown with foliage, occupy the foreground of a painting of Venetian palaces, but in which the combination is carried out with so much sparkle and nervous life and such charm of style, that it is attractive and piquant rather than grotesque.

England is richest in Guardis, of any country, but France in one respect is better off, in possessing no less than eleven fine paintings of public ceremonials. Guardi may be considered the originator of small sketches, and perhaps the precursor of those glib little views which are handed about the Piazza at the present day. His drawings are fairly numerous, and are remarkably delicate and incisive in touch. A large collection which he left to his son is now in the Museo Correr. In his later years he was reduced to poverty and used to exhibit sketches in the Piazza, parting with them for a few ducats, and in this way flooding Venice with small landscapes. The exact spot occupied by his _bottega_ is said to be at the corner of the Palazzo Reale, opposite the Clock Tower. The house in which he died still exists in the Campiello della Madonna, No. 5433, Parrocchia S. Canziano, and has a shrine dedicated to the Madonna attached to it. When quite an old man, Guardi paid a visit to the home of his ancestors, at Mastellano in the Austrian Tyrol, and made a drawing of Castello Corvello on the route. To this day his name is remembered with pride in his Tyrolean valley.

SOME WORKS OF GUARDI

Bergamo. Lochis: Landscapes.

Berlin. Grand Ca.n.a.l; Lagoon; Cemetery Island.

London. Views in Venice.

Milan. Museo Civico: Landscapes.

Poldi-Pezzoli: Piazzetta; Dogana; Landscapes.

Oxford. Taylorian Museum: Views in Venice.

Padua. Views in Venice.

Paris. Procession of the Doge to S. Zaccaria; Embarkment in Bucentaur; Festival at Salute; "Jeudi Gras" in Venice; Corpus Christi; Sala di Collegio; Coronation of Doge.

Turin. Cottage; Staircase; Bridge over Ca.n.a.l.

Venice. Museo Correr: The Ridotto; Parlour of Convent.

Verona. Landscapes.

Wallace Collection. The Rialto; San Giorgio Maggiore (two); S. Maria della Salute; Archway in Venice; Vaulted Arcades; The Dogana.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

It is an advantage to the student of Italian art to be able to read French, German, and Italian, for though translations appear of the most important works, there are many interesting articles and monographs of minor artists which are otherwise inaccessible.

Vasari, not always trustworthy, either in dates, facts, or opinions, yet delightfully human in his histories, is indispensable, and new editions and translations are constantly issued. Sansoni's edition (Florence), with Milanesi's notes, is the most authoritative; and for translations, those of Mrs. Foster (Messrs. Blashfield and Hopkins), and a new edition in the Temple cla.s.sics (Dent, 8 vols., 2s. each vol.).