(Venice 1673–1744)
The Piazzetta looking South, Venice,
oil on canvas, 72.5 x 110 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private European collection;
where acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to Charles Beddington for suggesting the attribution of the present painting after examination in the original and for his help in cataloguing this lot.

The present painting shows the Piazzetta in Venice looking South to the Bacino. On the left is the narthex of San Marco and while on the right is the Bibliotheca. In the centre is the Piazzetta with the columns dedicated to the patron saints of Venice, Mark and Theodore visible in the foreground. Across the Bacino, lies the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, whose Benedictine church was built by Andrea Palladio in 1565.

The attribution of this painting to Bernardo Canal, advanced by Beddington, is based on the similarity to the other known works by the artist. Bernardo’s style and palette, dominated by browns, are highly distinctive, and he is the author of considerable body of work, although there are significant variations of quality and of manner. Some of the finest are subtly coloured and highly translucent, such as the Panoramic view of the Bacino di San Marco sold from the estate of Giancarlo Baroni at Sotheby’s, New York (29 January 2013, lot 28) while many are dominated by the russet colour of the ground, such as the pair sold at the same auction house on 22 January 2004 (lot 182, as The Master of the Langmatt Foundation Views) and subsequently by Porro & C., Milan, 21 October 2009 (lot 34).

All attributions to Bernardo Canal are based on a group of five Venetian views, once in the Salom Collection in Venice, which follow engravings by Bernard Vogel after Johan Richter, and which are all recorded as signed and dated on the reverse ‘Bernardo Canal Fecit 1734’. Those were until recently the artist’s only securely datable works. A pair of Venetian views said to be signed and dated ‘gennaio 1737’ (presumably on the reverse) appeared on the London market in 2014 (see London, Lampronti Gallery, The Splendours of Venice: View paintings from the Eighteeenth Century, London 2014, pp. 22-23, cat. nos. 8a and 8b).

Bernardo Canal is known above all as the father of Canaletto, and after that as the eldest member of a studio which for several years included his grandsons Bernardo Bellotto and pietro Bellotti. He provided his celebrated son’s only education in the art of painting. In fact, he was already a painter before his son was born in 1697 and was a member of the first generation of Venetian view painters. He was born on 27 September 1673, rather than in 1664 as was until recently believed, he was still only a decade younger than Luca Carlevarijs (born in 1663) and less of Johan Richter (born in 1665), the artist whose style he most resembles.

Relatively little is known of Bernardo’s career. He was inscribed in the Venetian painters’ guild in 1717, 1738 and 1743, and was nominated Prior of the Venetian Collegio dei Pittori in 1739, which would seem to indicate a degree of respect from his peers. Between 1716 and 1718 Bernardo Canal worked as a scenographer for the Venetian theatres of San Cassiano and Sant’Angelo, with assistance from his sons Antonio (Canaletto) and Cristoforo, for the staging of works by Pollarolo, Chelleri and Vivaldi. This aspect of his activity also took him to Rome in 1719-20, with the young Canaletto, to produce sets for Alessandro Scarlatti’s Turno Aricino and Tito Sempronio Gracco performed at the Teatro Capranica during Carnival in 1720. It was there that Canaletto is famously said to have first been inspired to draw his surroundings and to give up working for the theatre.