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 ambassadors, 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 “Fête du Jeudi Gras” (Louvre) he illustrates 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 assembled, 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 classic remains, triumphal arches, airy Palladian monuments. Hiscapricciinclude 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 withsmall landscapes. The exact spot occupied by hisbottegais 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 Canal; 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 Canal.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.
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 classics (Dent, 8 vols., 2s. each vol.).
Ridolfi, the principal contemporary authority on Venetian artists, who published hisMaraviglie dell’ artenine years after Domenico Tintoretto’s death, is only to be read in Italian, though the anecdotes with which his work abounds are made use of by every writer.
Crowe and Cavalcaselle’sPainting in North Italy(Murray) is a storehouse of painstaking, minute, and, on the whole, marvellously correct information and sound opinion. It supplies a foundation, fills gaps, and supplements individual biographies as no other book does. For the early painters, down to the time of the Bellini,I Origini dei pittori veneziani, by Professor Leonello Venturi, Venice, 1907, is a large book, written with mastery and insight, and well illustrated;La Storia della pittura venezianais another careful work, which deals very minutely with the early school of mosaics.
In studying the Bellini, the late Mr. S. A. Strong hasThe Brothers Bellini(Bell’s Great Masters), and the reader shouldnot fail to read Mr. Roger Fry’sBellini(Artist’s Library), a scholarly monograph, short but reliable, and full of suggestion and appreciation, though written in a cool, critical spirit. Dr. Hills has dealt ably withPisanello(Duckworth).
Molmenti and Ludwig in their monumental workVittore Carpaccio, translated by Mr. R. H. Cust (Murray, 1907), and Paul Kristeller in the equally importantMantegna, translated by Mr. S. A. Strong (Longmans, 1901), seem to have exhausted all that there is to be said for the moment concerning these two painters.
It is almost superfluous to mention Mr. Berenson’s two well-known volumes,The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance, and theNorth Italian Painters of the Renaissance(Putnam). They are brilliant essays which supplement every other work, overflowing with suggestive and critical matter, supplying original thoughts, and summing up in a few pregnant words the main features and the tendencies of the succeeding stages.
In studying Giorgione, we cannot dispense with Pater’s essay, included inThe Renaissance. The author is not always well informed as to facts—he wrote in the early days of criticism—but he is rich in idea and feeling. Mr. Herbert Cook’sLife of Giorgione(Bell’s Great Masters) is full and interesting. Some authorities question his attributions as being too numerous, but whether we regard them as authentic works of the master or as belonging to his school, the illustrations he gives add materially to our knowledge of the Giorgionesque.
When we come to Titian we are well off. Crowe and Cavalcaselle’sLife of Titian(Murray, out of print), in two large volumes, is well written and full of good material, from which subsequent writers have borrowed. An excellent Life, full of penetrating criticism, by Mr. C. Ricketts, was lately brought out by Methuen (Classics of Art), complete with illustrations, and including a minute analysis of Titian’s technique. Sir Claude Phillips’s Monograph on Titian will appeal to every thoughtful lover of the painter’s genius, and Dr. Gronau has written a good and scholarly Life (Duckworth).
Mr. Berenson’sLorenzo Lottomust be read for its interest and learning, given with all the author’s charm and lucidity. It includes an essay on Alvise Vivarini.
My ownTintoretto(Methuen, Classics of Art) gives a fullaccount of the man and his work, and especially deals exhaustively with the scheme and details of the Scuola di San Rocco. Professor Thode has written a detailed and profusely illustrated Life of Tintoretto in the Knackfuss Series, and the Paradiso has been treated at length and illustrated in great detail in a very scholarlyédition de luxeby Mr. F. O. Osmaston. It is the fashion to discard Ruskin, but though we may allow that his judgments are exaggerated, that he reads more into a picture than the artist intended, and that he is too fond of preaching sermons, there are few critics who have so many ideas to give us, or who are so informed with a deep love of art, and bothModern Paintersand theStones of Veniceshould be read.
M. Charles Yriarte has written a Life of Paolo Veronese, which is full of charm and knowledge. It is interesting to take a copy of Boschini’sDella pittura veneziana, 1797, when visiting the galleries, the palaces, and the churches of Venice. His lists of the pictures, as they were known in his day, often open our eyes to doubtful attributions. Second-hand copies of Boschini are not difficult to pick up. When the later-century artists are reached, a good sketch of the Venice of their period is supplied by Philippe Monnier’s delightfulVenice in the Eighteenth Century(Chatto and Windus), which also has a good chapter on the lesser Venetian masters. The best Life of Tiepolo is in Italian, by Professor Pompeo Molmenti. The smaller masters have to be hunted for in many scattered essays; a knowledge of Goldoni adds point to Longhi’s pictures. Canaletto and his nephew, Belotto, have been treated by M. Uzanne,Les Deux Canaletto; and Mr. Simonson has written an important and charming volume on Francesco Guardi (Methuen, 1904), with beautiful reproductions of his works. Among other books which give special information are Morelli’s two volumes,Italian Painters in Borghese and Doria Pamphili, andIn Dresden and Munich Galleries, translated by Miss Jocelyn ffoulkes (Murray); and Dr. J. P. Richter’s magnificent catalogue of the Mond Collection—which, though published at fifteen guineas, can be seen in the great art libraries—has some valuable chapters on the Venetian masters.