VISENTINI, Antonio

With its classical ruins and group of architects busy taking measurements, the scene is perfectly yin tune with the scholarly work carried out by Visentini, a professor of perspective.

Just after mid-eighteenth century, perspective painting became an autonomous form of pictorial expression and soon constituted the basis for an independent field of artistic endeavour in the Venetian academy itself. Antonio Visentini taught perspective as a subject in the academy and painted perspective views of impressive architectural complexes enlivened with stories from classical drama or imaginary vistas like the present painting. Here a complicated exercise in architectural perspective provides a setting for musical entertainment, one of the most pleasant pastimes of the aristocracy of the period.

The drawing shows the fa�ade of the church San Francesco della Vigna in Venice, built by Palladio in 1562.

This etching belongs to the series Urbis Venetiarum.

The engraving was made after Giovanni Battista Piazzetta for the title page of Prospectus Magni Canalis Venetiarum.

Characteristic of the manner in which Smith, Canaletto’s ‘manager’ marketed the artist’s work is the commission he gave the painter in about 1730: the Prospectus Magni Canalis Venetiarum. The plan initially involved twelve views of the Grand Canal as an elaborate portrait of the entire waterway. When they were finished, according to plan the series was engraved in 1735 by the distinguished printmaker Antonio Visentini, and complemented with two more prints after paintings of traditional festivals. The original paintings were all in Smith’s keeping, as is clearly indicated by the message to potential buyers on the frontispiece of the printed series: In Aedibus Josephi Smith Angli.’ At first Smith was not willing to part with the originals, however; clients were to order autograph copies of one or more of the views from the artist through him. Only in 1762, toward the end of his long life, did Smith decide to sell the series, together with his other Canalettos, en bloc to George III of England. Since then these paintings have been in the British royal collection.

The painter who introduced this part of Venice in topographical painting was Canaletto. Following his example Antonio Visentini made an etching for the series Prospectus Magni Canalis Venetiarum, published in 1735 and 1742. Canaletto included both sides of the canal in the scene and he chose a distant standpoint in the bend of the canal near the Fondamenta della Croce.

Canaletto was the first to depict this view of the Grand Canal, but later Francesco Guardi also painted this view. The Visentini based on his etching on Canaletto’s painting. In the etching the Grand Canal is wedged in, as it were, between the churches and palaces. Consequently the buildings had to be shown in such foreshortening that the fa�ade of Santa Lucia, for instance, is scarcely visible.

The painting belongs to a cycle of eight large perspective views that derive from sketches of theatrical stage design. The series is striking for its architectural complexity, which provides an extraordinary background to ordinary daily life and amusement.