Francesco Guardi

Baron de Beurnonville collection, Paris, by 1883;
His sale, Paris, George, Féral, Petit, 22-23 May 1883, lots 129 (Santa Maria della Salute) and 130 (San Giorgio Maggiore);
Princesse de Courval collection, Paris;
Princesse de Poix collection;
Duc de Mouchy collection;
Thence by descent to the present owners.

Paris, Musée de l'Orangerie, Venise au XVIIIe Siècle, 21 September - 29 November 1971, nos. 89 and 90.

Catalogue of Paintings in the Wallace Collection, London 1928, p. 125 (Santa Maria della Salute only);
A. Morassi, Guardi, Venice 1973, vol. I, p. 395, cat. no. 449 (San Giorgio) and p. 403, cat. no. 491 (Salute);
A. Morassi, Guardi, I Dipinti, Venice 1993, vol. I, p. 395, cat. no. 449 (San Giorgio), and p. 403, cat. no. 491 (Salute).

ENGRAVED:
By Léon Gaucherel (1816-1886).

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's. Francesco Guardi. Two Vedute of Venice. This pair of vedute has fairly old linings and stretchers, holding the paint very securely. Narrow original stretcher bar lines can be seen and there is a fine but quite marked wide old craquelure, which has been minutely touched out across the sky in both paintings in a recent restoration. There was apparently some brittleness in the past and the edges have possible lost flakes retouched often down the outer side edges. San Giorgio Maggiore. This painting has such apparent flaking losses retouched; in the top left corner, a larger loss by the top right edge, fewer along the base, some small retouchings in the sky to the left, one in the water at lower centre left and one just above the foreground boat. The lining especially in this painting has compressed the surface, although the washes of the sky have not been lost. The fine dark definitions in the architecture and detail of rigging and figures are quite thin, with the dark hulls of the boats and sails at lower right very worn. The darks in the boat at lower left are rather more strongly preserved. The most beautifully intact whole area is around the central boat and the exquisite treatment of the group of boats in the upper centre towards the horizon. The fine brushwork and washes of the island end of the Guidecca against the horizon are still a little faint but retain their original delicacy. The Dogana. The surface in this painting has suffered rather less from the lining, with some impasto visible. The edges have various apparent flaking losses retouched, rather less at the base and top edges but larger retouchings down the left edge in particular. There are some isolated small retouched flakes by the top left corner and in other places across the sky, with one also by the lower right gondola and on the bank in the centre. Much of the central detail has been well preserved with the vivid brushwork finely intact. The finesse of the flickering highlights and dark calligraphic definitions are especially remarkable at lower left. There is some thinness around the Redentore, with the washes of the sky also thinner there around the dome, and there is wear along the base edge. However the silvery light and beauty of the brushwork have been retained throughout despite such almost inevitable imperfections. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
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This beautiful pair of Venetian views by Francesco Guardi belongs to the artist's full maturity and can be dated in all probability to the 1780s. The paintings represent two of the most famous and popular views in Venice: the Entrance to the Grand Canal with the Church of Santa Maria della Salute and the Punta della Dogana; and a view looking out across the Bacino di San Marco towards Andrea Palladio's masterpiece of classical architecture, the church of San Giorgio Maggiore. The paintings enjoy an illustrious provenance, having remained in the possession of a French noble family since the late 19th century and are presented at auction today for the first time in over a century.

Guardi painted these two particular views with their famous sites on numerous occasions and indeed they perhaps constitute his most successful pairing of Venetian views. That of San Giorgio Maggiore comes closest to a painting of similar dimensions in the Wallace Collection, London, which is taken from the same viewpoint, though with numerous changes to the disposition of the boats and figures (fig. 1).¹ On the right of the scene one can see the end of the Giudecca and the tower of the Church of San Giovanni Battista, now destroyed. In his definitive 1973 catalogue raisonné (republished in 1993), Morassi describes the view of San Giorgio as 'Opera di bella qualità, del periodo maturo' (see Literature).

The Wallace collection View of San Giorgio Maggiore is likewise paired with a view of the church of Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana (fig. 2). Such a pairing allowed for a continuous panorama, with the Palladian church of San Giorgio Maggiore framing the view at the left, and Baldassare Longhena's baroque masterpiece balancing it on the right flank. Other examples of the pairing are to be found in what was originally a set of four paintings that was subsequently split into two pairs; the pair combining San Giorgio Maggiore with the Salute were formerly in the collection of Comte and Comtesse Guy du Boisrouvray, Paris, and were sold New York, Sotheby's, 28 January 2000, lot 83 (figs. 3 and 4).

With these pairings Guardi effectively depicts the great breadth of the Bacino di San Marco which, other than for a small opening to the right of the island of San Giorgio, appears enclosed by the long strip of the Giudecca. On the Giudecca itself, at the extreme left-hand edge of the view of the Salute, we can make out Palladio's other Venetian masterpiece; the church of Il Redentore. With the paintings hung side by side, the immensity of the city and its islands is laid out before us, dominated by the vast blue skies and its silvery reflections in the water beneath. The acqueous light is interrupted here and there by splashes and flicks of red, yellow and deep blue on the clothing of the figures that both animate the scenes and lend them a sense of the frantic trade and to-ing and fro-ing of the city's people.  Like no other painter, with the speed of his brush and unique understanding of colour, Guardi could achieve such dazzling reproductions of the effects of light on the stones and waters of the lagoon and their ever-changing glints and reflections, while at the same time building believable though fleeting snapshots of Venetian daily life. 

The view of the Entrance to the Grand Canal with the church of Santa Maria della Salute and the Punta della Dogana was particularly admire by Antonio Morassi fot its supreme quality and condition, describing it as an "opera di altissimo livello e di perfetta conservazione". Morassi records numerous versions from the same viewpoint, which is to say looking out from the edge of the Piazzetta, south-west, and other than the aforementioned version in the Wallace collection, the present painting is closest to a work of slightly larger dimensions (49.5 by 90 cm.) today in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which also reveals differences in the arrangement of boats and staffage.²

Guardi also painted several works focused solely on the Punta della Dogana itself, omitting the church of the Salute to the right. One such example was recently sold in London, Christie's, 7 December 2006, lot 67 (for £3.76m). The Dogana housed the 'Dogana de Mar' (or Customs House) for all boats entering Venice. It was designed by the architect Giuseppe Benoni and erected between 1667 and 1682, thus after the church of the Salute which the Republic had had built to a design by Longhena in 1631 in thanks for their deliverance from the plague of 1630. The statue of Fortune surmounting a golden ball that sits on top of the Dogana is mobile and acts as a weathervane by holding a garment (or perhaps a ship's rudder) to the wind. It seems undisturbed in the present scene, like the waters beneath which raise barely a ripple in the stillness of the midday sun. The site was described by Henry James in his Italian Hours essay on Venice:

"This charming architectural promontory of the Dogana stretches out the most graceful of arms, balancing in its hand the gilded globe on which revoloves the delightful satirical figure of a little weathercock of a woman. This Fortune, this Navigation, or whatever she is called - she surely needs no name - catches the wind in the bit of drapery of which she has divested her rotary bronze loveliness." 

1. See A. Morassi, under Literature, 1993, vol. I, pp. 391-2, cat. no. 429, reproduced vol. II, fig. 449.
2. Morassi, op. cit., vol. I, p. 400, cat. no. 479, reproduced vol. II, fig. 484.