Scheduled from 23 January to 12 June 2016, entitled “The splendor of Venice. Canaletto, Bellotto, Guardi ei vedutisti dell'Ottocento”, which will celebrate the Italian city that more than any other has been, and still is today, a timeless myth in the collective imagination.
The initiative, curated by Davide Dotti, with the patronage of the Province of Brescia, will present over one hundred masterpieces by Canaletto, Bellotto, Guardi and the most important landscape painters of the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries, from public and private, Italian and international collections.
For the first time, the analysis of the iconographic trend that went down in history under the name of 'Vedutismo' will not end with the experience of Francesco Guardi, but will also continue throughout the decades of the XNUMXth century.
The views conceived by the painters, populated by specks in period costumes and by the characters of the Commedia dell'Arte, often become frames for the famous Venetian festivals of the Redeemer, the Historical Regatta, the Sensa and the Carnival enlivened by traditional masks.
The exhibition itinerary, arranged chronologically, will be inaugurated by the suggestions of the Dutch Gaspar Van Wittel and by those of the Friulian Luca Carlevarijs who will pave the way for the extraordinary talent of Canaletto, to whom the second section will be dedicated. Here, his views will dialogue with those of his father Bernardo Canal and his nephew Bernardo Bellotto.
Subsequently, the works of the major authors of the second and third quarter of the eighteenth century will be proposed, in which the Swedish Johan Richter and the Englishman William James will be joined by the Italians Michele Marieschi, Francesco Albotto, Antonio Gnoli, Jacopo Fabris.
The seductive beauty of Canaletto's Venice becomes a vague and remote place in the works that Francesco Guardi created in the second half of the XNUMXth century. The long artistic trajectory of the master, witnessed in the review through a dozen works, is condensed in the pictorial expression of an almost phantom city, seen in fading between bright flashes and indistinct halos of color that prelude to modern painting.
The Friulian Giuseppe Bernardino Bison, born in Palmanova in 1762 and died in Milan in 1844, interpreting in an original way according to the aesthetic canons of the new romantic sensibility the tradition of the Grand Siècle – of Canaletto and Guardi in primis – assumed the role of ferryman of the Landscape painting from the XNUMXth to the XNUMXth century. The figure of Bison, of which various unpublished works will be presented, the result of recent discoveries in private collections, will be compared with that of other important artists of the first half of the nineteenth century such as Vincenzo Chilone, Giovanni Migliara, Giuseppe Borsato, Francesco Moja and Giuseppe Canella who, inventing unprecedented angles, atmospheres and contexts, renewed the image of the Serenissima, updating it and enriching it with details that express the spirit of their time.
In the last section, after two rooms dedicated respectively to members of the Grubacs family and to Ippolito Caffi, we will encounter the paintings made in the second half of the 1839th century by Luigi Querena, Francesco Zanin, Guglielmo Ciardi, Pietro Fragiacomo and others still who perpetuated the fascination timeless image of Venice up to the borders of the modern era. Also presented will be a very rare large-scale Venice by the Brescian master Angelo Inganni, dating back to XNUMX, which immortalizes Piazza San Marco enlivened by breezy specks in period costumes.
Within the exhibition itinerary, there will be a section entitled Venice in the copper mirror, in which it will be possible to admire a series of refined engravings by Canaletto, Michele Marieschi, Antonio Visentini, Antonio Sandi and Giambattista Brustolon, specialists in the technique of 'etching and burin which, thanks to the limited edition, has contributed to spreading the image of the Serenissima throughout Europe.
In conclusion, Venice theater of life will offer paintings with scenes of daily life set in campi and campielli, between the calli and canals of the city.
Based on the more than 20.000 students who visited the Food in the Art exhibition, also for The Splendor of Venice, the Friends of Palazzo Martinengo Association will offer schools a rich educational offer aimed at all classes of all levels, which consists of 7 workshops and 6 thematic courses conducted by specialized operators.
THE SPLENDOR OF VENICE
Canaletto, Bellotto, Guardi and the landscape painters of the XNUMXth century
Brescia, Palazzo Martinengo (via dei Musei 30)
23 January – 12 June 2016
