DOMENICHINI, Apollonio

This work depicts the view of Venice as it was seen from the sea for centuries. Based on a veduta by Canaletto made in the 1730s, this view was to influence an entire generation of Venetian artists. It depicts all the most important religious and secular buildings in the city: the Doge’s Palace, the Church of Saint Mark, the Campanile, as well as the Biblioteca Marciana and the Zecca, both designed by Jacopo Sansovino. At the harbour entrance we see the Bucentaur, the sumptuous red and gold state barque of the Doges.

The work depicts the closing ceremony of the Festa dell’Ascensione, known locally in Venice as the Festa della Sensa. During this spectacular feast on Ascension Day, the Doge was ritually married to the sea. Accompanied by a myriad of other boats and all the most important personalities in the city, the Doge would ride out in the Bucentaur and throw a ring into water. The beginning and end of the ceremony were marked by the state ship leaving from and returning to harbour mouth near the Doge’s palace. In this work, we see the high dignitaries and the populace bustling around the palace and wooden market stalls set up on the piazzetta between the Doge’s palace and the Biblioteca Marciana.

The painting shows a view from the Giudecca facing east with the church of the Chiesa delle Zitelle.

This canvas belongs to a group of paintings formerly attributed to an anonymous painter called the Master of the Langmatt Foundation after a set of vedute in the Langmatt Foundation, Baden. The hypothesis that Apollonio Domenichini could be the painter of this body of finely executed and distinctive vedute was debated by scholars of Venetian painting. However, it was only with the discovery of a lost inscription on the reverse of an original canvas under the lining of a painting that it was possible to definitely identify Domenichini as the painter of the Langmatt views.

This veduta illustrates one of the most famous scenes of ancient Rome with impeccable topographic precision: Piazza della Rotonda, also known as Piazza del Pantheon. The structure was built in 27-25 BC. It was completely torn down in 110, and rebuilt between 118 and 128. The twin bell towers visible on the fa�ade, designed by Bernini and dubbed “the ass’s ears”, were torn down in 1903.

Characterized by the very typical dry and elongated splashes of colour of figures dressed in the Venetian style and the diffused atmospheric light of the sky with its hazy cloud cover, the canvas was painted probably in the late 1740s or early 1750s.

This view of Venice shows the Grand Canal with the church of San Geremia and the entrance to the Cannaregio.

This view of Venice shows the Grand Canal with the churches of Santa Lucia and the Scalzi.