GUARDI, Francesco (Venice, 1712 – Venice, 1793)
Guardi painted only figures until nearly 1760, the year in which his brother Giovanni Antonio—thirteen years older than he and owner of the studio in which Francesco and his other brother Niccolò trained as painters—died. Nevertheless, Francesco Guardi is universally known as a specialist in views. His activity as a painter of figures is as nebulous as it is unremarkable. The signed Saint with a Monstrance in Buonconsiglio Castle in Trent is based on a prototype by Piazzetta and can be dated a little after 1739. The lunette with the Vision of Saint Francis may also be his. It accompanied another two works of a larger format by Giovanni Antonio and was painted around 1738 for the parish church of Vigo d’Anaunia in Trentino, where his uncle was parish priest. Another two signed works that in fact are very close in style to that of his brother are the Hope and Charity now in the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, while the attribution to Francesco seems dubious in the case of the Holy Family with Angels (Ohio, The Toledo Museum of Art); here one would have to consider the possible authorship of Giovanni Antonio. According to recent critical scholarly opinion, Guardi turned almost exclusively to views around 1755 with The Shrovetide Fair in the Piazzetta, which is now in a private collection in Switzerland and is signed and dated 1756. The first “capricci” were published after 1760. It is not easy to establish the direct sources of Guardi’s view paintings, but the statement by the chronicler Gradenigo, who in 1764 described him as “a good pupil of the renowned Canaletto,” seems well-founded. In fact, the relatively “youthful” views by Francesco (ultimately his career stretched over fifty years) reveal a marked influence of the older artist’s analytical approach and are even based on Canaletto’s prints of the early 1740s. The break with the models of Canaletto and the start of a personal move towards more luminous, spacious and illusionist spaces took place after the early 1770s with the cycle of twelve canvases created for Duke Alvise IV Mocenigo, depicting the Ducal Feasts (now divided between the Musée du Louvre, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes and other locations). The paintings that commemorate the visit of Pope Pius VI to Venice in 1782 (now in private collections in Milan, and in Oxford and Cleveland museums) are notable works within Guardi’s enormous oeuvre. Another painting that is practically contemporary to these, the Concert in the Philharmonics Hall, in the Munich, Alte Pinakothek (one of six canvases painted in honor of the stay in Venice of the “Counts of the North”), is also remarkable, as are The Fire of San Marcuola (of which several versions are known: Munich, Alte Pinakothek; Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia), which depicts a real event at the end of 1784, and A Boat-Race towards the Rialto (Lisbon, Fundaça-o Calouste, Gulbenkian, around 1790). Guardi’s vivid imagination found an outlet in the many “capricci” with invented landscapes that were surely inspired by the fantastical views of Marco Ricci (three canvases previously in the Colloredo di Montalbano Castle, Friuli, and now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York).
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