The exhibition presents a spectacular selection of eighteenth-century
Venetian art, with Canaletto's greatest works shown alongside paintings
and works on paper by Sebastiano and Marco Ricci, Francesco Zuccarelli,
Rosalba Carriera, Pietro Longhi and Giovanni Battista Piazzetta. The
exhibition explores the many delights of eighteenth-century Venice, from
the splendours of the Grand Canal and St Mark's Square to its
festivals, theatre and masked carnival, bringing the irresistible allure
of the most beautiful city in the world to The Queen's Gallery.
The Royal Collection contains the world's finest group of paintings,
drawings and prints by Venice's most famous view-painter, Canaletto
(1697-1768). These works were bought by the young George III in 1762
from Canaletto's agent and dealer Joseph Smith, British Consul in
Venice, along with the rest of Smith's huge collection.
Smith first met Canaletto in the early 1720s, and quickly spotted his
potential. Their relationship developed into an unofficial partnership
of mutual benefit, and a friendship that was to last for over 40 years.
Canaletto’s paintings of Venetian views found a lucrative market
among the British Grand Tourists in Venice who wanted paintings of the
city to take back to Britain as souvenirs. Smith acted as Canaletto’s
agent, liaising between artist and patron, handling payments and
shipping works to Britain. At the same time Smith commissioned many
paintings from Canaletto for his own collection, such as the series of
12 paintings of the Grand Canal that promoted his work to the many
visitors Smith received in his palazzo.
Smith also supported Canaletto in more difficult times: in the 1740s
the War of the Austrian Succession disrupted the steady stream of
visitors to Venice, and as the artist’s workload declined, Smith
commissioned a series of monumental views of Rome and a set of overdoor
paintings. In 1746 Smith arranged for Canaletto to travel to Britain,
where he stayed for almost ten years.
By 1762, when his collection was sold to George III, Joseph Smith had
amassed the greatest collection in existence of paintings and drawings
by Canaletto.
In 1762 the young monarch George III purchased virtually the entire
collection of Joseph Smith, the greatest patron of art in Venice at the
time. Thanks to this single acquisition, the Royal Collection contains
one of the finest groups of 18th-century Venetian art in the world,
including the largest collection of works by Giovanni Antonio Canal,
better known as Canaletto.
Through over 200 paintings, drawings and prints from the Royal Collection's exceptional holdings, Canaletto & the Art of Venice presents
the work of Venice's most famous view-painter alongside that of his
contemporaries, including Sebastiano and Marco Ricci, Rosalba Carriera,
Francesco Zuccarelli, Giovanni Battista Piazzetta and Pietro Longhi, and
explores how they captured the essence and allure of Venice for their
18th-century audience, as they still do today.
Joseph Smith (c.1674−1770) was an English merchant and later
British Consul in Venice, a post dealing with Britain’s maritime,
commercial and trading interests. He had moved to Italy in around 1700
and over several decades built up an outstanding art collection, acting
as both patron and dealer to many contemporary Venetian artists. Smith
was Canaletto's principal agent, selling his paintings to the wealthy
Grand Tourists who were drawn to Venice's cultural attractions. His
palazzo on the Grand Canal became a meeting place for collectors,
patrons, scholars and tourists, where visitors could admire his vast
collection and commission their own versions of Canaletto's views to
take home.
Canaletto The Mouth of the Grand Canal looking West towards the Carità, c.1729
Canaletto - The Royal Collection RCIN 400523. Title: The Grand Canal looking east
One of the most important of Smith's commissions from Canaletto was
the series of 12 paintings of the Grand Canal, which together create a
near complete journey down the waterway. Canaletto's sharp-eyed
precision makes these views seem powerfully real, yet he rearranged and
altered elements of each composition to create ideal impressions of the
city. Two larger paintings are of festivals, including the 'Sposalizio
del Mar', or 'Wedding of the Sea', which took place on Ascension Day and
attracted crowds of British visitors. The Grand Canal was a subject
frequently captured by Canaletto, including in a series of six drawings,
among them Venice: The central stretch of the Grand Canal, c.1734.
Intended as works of art in their own right, rather than as
preparatory studies for paintings, the drawings are carefully
constructed and rich in tone and detail.
Alongside the grand public entertainments, Venice boasted a thriving
opera and theatre scene, especially during carnival season. The need to
create stage sets within a very short period of time provided plentiful
employment for Venetian artists. Both Marco Ricci and Canaletto worked
for the theatre, where they learned how to manipulate perspective to
heighten drama.
The exhibition includes several of Ricci's designs for
the Venetian stage, such as A room with a balcony supported by Atlantes, c.1726.
Marco Ricci also produced caricatures of opera singers, such as the
drawing of the internationally famed castrato Farinelli, which were
circulated among Joseph Smith and his fellow Venetian collectors and
opera aficionados.
On display together for the first time are personifications of the
Four Seasons by Rosalba Carriera, whose pastels were highly prized by
European collectors. They were intended to be hung in private domestic
spaces, such as dressing rooms, bedrooms or small antechambers.
Carriera was one of the first artists to develop a commercial
relationship with Joseph Smith, and her sensual pastel of 'Winter', c.1726, an allegorical female figure wrapped in furs, was one of the most admired works in Smith's collection.
Canaletto, Marco Ricci and Francesco Zuccarelli all contributed to
the development of the genre known as the capriccio – scenes combining
real and imaginary architecture, often set in an invented landscape, to
create poetically evocative works. The ruins of ancient Rome in both
Ricci's Caprice View with Roman Ruins, c.1729, and Zuccarelli's pastoral scene Landscape with Classical Ruins, Cattle and Figures, c.1741–2, convey a sense of the irrevocable loss of a great age.
There was a major revival in printmaking in Venice in the 18th
century, with many publishers recruiting established artists, such as
Giovanni Battista Piazzetta and Antonio Visentini, to provide designs
for their publications.
Joseph Smith was an enthusiastic print
collector and one of the major supporters of contemporary printmaking in
Venice. Smith financed and directed the Pasquali press, which
contributed to the circulation of Enlightenment ideas, such as those of
Isaac Newton, and imported banned foreign texts into Venice, including
the work of Voltaire.
Visentini was the chief draughtsman for the
press, providing many hundreds of pen and ink drawings of initials and
tailpieces, several of which will be on display in the exhibition.
