* Gaspar van Wittel, called Vanvitelli

Jacques-François-Léonor de Goyon-Matignon (from 1715 Grimaldi-Valentinois), Sire de Matignon and de la Roche-Goyon, Comte de Thorigny, Duc de Valentinois and Prince de Monaco (1689-1751), by 1719 and listed in his posthumous inventory of 1751;
Private collection, France;
Anonymous sale, Paris, Drouot, 9 June 2000, lot 56;
With Richard Green, London, 2000, by whom sold to a private collector in whose collection it remained until recently.

London, Richard Green, The Grand Tour. Visions of Italy, 3 - 22 December 2007, no. 2.

S. Morris, in The Grand Tour. Visions of Italy, exhibition catalogue, London, Richard Green, 3 - 22 December 2007, pp. 14-21, cat. no. 2, reproduced in colour, with details.

"The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This unlined painting is perhaps on the original stretcher (also inscribed M. le Duc de Valentinois). The stretcher is firm and the canvas has remained unusually strong. The restoration is recent with just a remarkably few, quite small retouchings: two little old knocks in the sky by the upper masts of the ship on the left, that have been repaired behind without patches, one other smaller retouching near the horizon below, occasional retouching at the edges at upper left and along the top edge with one near the corner at lower left. There are a few minor superficial touches in the upper sky and in the cloud to the right of the dome of the Salute, with tiny lines of strengthening along the cornice of the Salute buildings. Other little surface touches reinforce some of the roofs and also the darks of the gondolas, with occasional touches in the lower water left of centre, but these are minimal signs of restoration in an exceptionally well preserved painting. The light almost pastel tone and fine detail is beautifully intact overall. This report was not done under laboratory conditions."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This impressive view of Venice by the father of Italian view painting at the end of the 17th and first quarter of the 18th century was once owned by the French collector and aristocrat Jacques-François-Léonor de Goyon-Matignon (1689-1751), Sire de Matignon and de la Roche-Goyon, Comte de Thorigny, Duc de Valentinois and Prince de Monaco, from whose line the present Monegasque royal family descends. The painting once hung in his Paris home, the Hôtel Matignon on the rue de Varenne which, since 1934, has become the residence of the French Prime Minister. The appearance of this painting at auction is significant since it is one of the very few instances in Vanvitelli's œuvre in which a commission for a French patron has been identified.¹  If not painted directly for the Duc de Valentinois, it was certainly in his collection by 1719 and must have been acquired from the artist shortly after it was painted.²

Vanvitelli was born in the Netherlands but spent most of his life in Rome, where he made a name for himself painting views. It has been suggested that Vanvitelli was a precursor of the most famous 18th-century vedutisti in Venice and that his topographical views of the city, of which there are a relatively small number compared to those of Rome or Naples, established a tradition of view painting that was to become extremely popular in the ensuing centuries. Following the 1967 exhibition of Venetian views, in which eleven works by Vanvitelli featured, Giulio Briganti argued that the genre had begun with Vanvitelli and that his original viewpoints and compositions had later inspired Canaletto's own.³  The most obvious example to which Vanvitelli must have turned was his fellow-Dutchman Luca Carlevarijs, whose views of the city and the lagoon surrounding it differ considerably however from Vanvitelli's own: the latter applies as much – if not more – care to the architectural setting as he does to the boats and figures that populate it.

The exact date of Vanvitelli's Venetian sojourn is unknown but he did travel to Northern Italy on two different occasions; first in 1690 and then again in 1694. Either of these trips could have included a stay in Venice although the latter seems more likely, and his earliest dated view of the city is the View of the Molo, Piazzetta and Palazzo Ducale in the Museo del Prado, Madrid, which is dated 1697 and provides us with a terminus ante quem for the artist's presence in Venice.⁴  The last of Vanvitelli's dated views of Venice is from 1721 (private collection, Prague) and both this and another of 1717 (location unknown) are clearly inscribed stating that they were executed in Rome, probably from drawings the artist had done in situ many years earlier (though no drawings of this particular view survive).⁵

The view looks west towards the mouth of the Grand Canal, with the Punta della Dogana and the church of Santa Maria della Salute in the centre foreground. The Punta della Dogana, or 'Dogana de Mar', situated at the entrance to the Grand Canal and acting as customs house for all boats entering Venice, was designed by the architect Giuseppe Benoni and erected between 1667 and 1682. Vanvitelli's view is taken from the Bacino, as if the artist were standing in a boat, and this allows us to see the water forking either side of the Dogana. The castellated building on the right is that of the State Granaries, which were destroyed in Napoleonic times to make way for the Giardino Reale, and a fish market takes place in front (though this is partially hidden by the large shipping vessel).

At the far left of the composition, in the hazy light of the sunset, is the church of the Redentore on the island of the Giudecca, designed by Palladio and built in 1577 to give thanks to the Redeemer for having delivered the city from an outbreak of plague in 1575-76. Vanvitelli manages to achieves greater panoramic effect by painting the view on a long and thin rectangular canvas (a format he particularly favoured) and he dots the fore- and middle-ground with boats and figures, thus increasing the spatial depth of the scene. By widening the 'lens' of the viewpoint to incorporate architectural elements at the extreme left and right of the composition, our eye is led not only to the centre but also to the sides of the painting, maintaining our interest even in the far distance where Vanvitelli paints architectural details with astonishing accuracy and precision. Vanvitelli painted this view on at least seven other occasions, two examples of which are dated (1710 and 1721), changing the staffage and shipping each time.

The painting was owned by Jacques-François-Léonor de Goyon-Matignon, the Duc de Valentinois, as early as 1719 according to an old inscription on the reverse of the original canvas. This view is one of four listed in the posthumous inventory of the Duc's possessions in the Hôtel de Matignon, drawn up on 6 May 1751 (shortly after his death on 23 April that year), as no. 189: 'Quatre tableaux représentant des vues de Venise peint par Gasparo degli Occhiali 500L'.⁶  Whilst the identity and location of the other views is unknown, it is likely that they represented different views of the city on canvases of similar format and dimensions. Amongst the views of Venice painted by Vanvitelli those he particularly favoured were the Molo, Piazzetta and Palazzo Ducale; Santa Maria della Salute; and the Island of San Giorgio, so it is quite plausible that these completed the set of four views listed in the inventory.⁷

The Duc de Valentinois was a descendant of one of the oldest aristocratic families in Brittany. He was born the son of Jacques Goyon de Matignon III (1644-1725), Lieutenant-Général des Armées du Roi, and Charlotte de Matignon, Comtesse de Thorigny (d. 1721).⁸  He entered the French army in 1702 and by 1710 had become Colonel of the Royal-Etranger cavalry regiment. He was present at the siege of Douai and Quesnoy, was in Germany in 1713 (when he also succeeded his father as Lieutenant-Général of the province of Normandy) and in Spain six years later. In 1715 he married Louis-Hippolyte Grimaldi (1697-1731), Princesse Souveraine de Monaco and daughter of Antoine Grimaldi, the last of the male line that had ruled Monaco since 980 A.D.. The Duc de Saint-Simon explained this marriage of convenience in his Memoirs: "The Prince had only daughters and no hope of having other children. His affairs were entangled, and he frankly sought a way out by bartering away his dignity through his eldest daughter... What he needed was a man of quality willing, for the benefit of himself and his posterity, to give up forever his name, arms, and liveries and assume those of the Grimaldis."⁹  After the death of his father-in-law in 1731 the Duc de Valentinois became Jacques I, Prince de Monaco, but he was forced to abdicate shortly after his wife's death in 1733, leaving his eldest son Honoré III to assume the title.

Like his father, from whom he inherited the magnificent Hôtel de Matignon, he was an important collector and enthusiastic patron of his time. The Duc was painted by Pierre Gobert and Nicolas de Largillierre¹⁰ (Fig. 1) and his collection comprised of 16th-, 17th- and 18th-century works. In 1718 he began to buy paintings by David Teniers, Jacopo Bassano and Rubens, and by 1730 he also owned works by Jan Brueghel the Elder, Titian, Guido Reni, Carlo Maratta and Van Loo. The building in which his collection was housed – the Hôtel de Matignon – was built in 1722 by Jean Courtonne for the Prince de Tingry and the Duc commissioned Lancret and Fragonard to provide paintings to decorate the interior. The result must have been dazzling for Dézallier d'Argenville remarked that the building was 'plus un palais qu'un hôtel'.¹¹  The Hôtel's contents were sold by the Duc's heirs during the Revolution in 1803 and the collection was subsequently dispersed.

1. Two other examples are the pair of views of The Darsena in Naples and The apse of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome commissioned from Vanvitelli in 1712 by Michel-Ange de La Chausse (c.1655-1724) and sold at Sotheby's, London, 10 July 2003, lots 60 and 61 (for £1.7m and £1.8m respectively).
2. It is not known whether the Duc de Valentinois visited Vanvitelli's studio in Rome or, as is more likely, acquired the painting through an agent.
3. "...non è difficile rilevare come [Gaspar van Wittel] inaugurò virtualmente la storia della veduta veneziana, stabilendone la impostazione visiva e individuando, per primo, punti di vista che il Canaletto rese famosi" (it is hard not to notice that [Gaspar van Wittel] virtually inaugurated the history of Venetian views, establishing compositions and finding, him above all others, viewpoints which Canaletto later made famous); G. Briganti, cited by L. Laureati, "Gaspar van Wittel e l'origine del genere 'veduta' nella pittura veneziana del Settecento", in Gaspare Vanvitelli e le origini del vedutismo, exhibition catalogue, Rome, Chiostro del Bramante, 26 October 2002 – 2 February 2003, p. 47.
4. See G. Briganti, Gaspar van Wittel, L. Laureati & L. Trezzani eds., Milan 1996, p. 241, cat. no. 287, reproduced.
5. The Bacino di San Marco looking towards the Grand Canal, signed and dated 1721, and The Molo, Piazzetta and Palazzo Ducale, signed and dated 1717; see Briganti, op. cit., p. 245, cat. no. 302, and p. 241, cat. no. 289, both reproduced.
6. Archives Nationales, Paris, CXIII, 364.189.
7. See Briganti, ibid., pp. 240-50, cat. nos. 287-318.
8. Much of the biographical information concerning the Duc de Valetinois is taken from Susan Morris' essay, see Literature, p. 18.
9. Quoted in C. Fregnac & W. Andrews, The Great Houses of Paris, London 1979, p. 118, and cited by Morris, op. cit..
10. That pictured here, was in the collection of H.S.H. Prince Rainier III of Monaco and is presumably still in the princely collections of Albert II; see M.N. Rosenfeld, Largillierre and the Eighteenth-Century Portrait, exhibition catalogue, Montreal, Museum of Fine Arts, 19 September – 15 November 1981, pp. 267-69, cat. no. 54, reproduced
11. Quoted in Le Faubourg Saint-Germain: La Rue de Varenne, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Musée Rodin, 1981, p. 27; cited by Morris, ibid..