(Venice 1710–1743)
Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo and the Scuola di San Marco, Venice,
oil on canvas, 61 x 95 cm, framed

Provenance:
art market, France;
where acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to Bożena Anna Kowalczyk for endorsing the attribution after examination of the present painting in the original and for her help in cataloguing this lot.

Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo, the second largest and most important square in Venice after Piazza San Marco, is depicted here from the south, with the façade of the large Gothic church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo on the right. The focal point of the scene is the Scuola di San Marco, one of Venice’s six main religious confraternities. On the far right stands the famous equestrian statue by Andrea del Verrocchio of the Condottiero Bartolommeo Colleoni, erected in 1496.

The composition is inspired by two famous canvases painted by Canaletto in the 1720s. The first, now in Dresden, is probably the view purchased in 1725 by the imperial ambassador during the public exhibition on the day of San Rocco, while the second version, slightly modified in the church’s perspective, was painted a few months later for a collector from Lucca (W.G. Constable, Canaletto, Oxford 1962, II, no. 304-305). In 1741, Marieschi engraved the same view of Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo, though with a slightly less close perspective, in his collection Magnificentiores selectioresque Urbis Venetiorum prospectus published in Venice. This printed version further increased the popularity of the subject, which was also taken up by Bernardo Bellotto, for instance in his canvas at the National Gallery of Washington (inv. no. 1942.9.7).

Marieschi himself revisited the view of Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo and the Scuola di San Marco on several occasions, adhering more or less faithfully to the perspective used for the engraving. Following the custom of the time, the painter would visit the scenes of events to gather inspiration, which he would then rework in his studio using a camera obscura, producing distortions and expansions of the landscapes. Canaletto, who worked in a similar manner, was a constant reference for Marieschi. Yet, compared to his more established colleague, Marieschi showed a preference for imagination over strict fidelity. His views are often constructed with a very strong perspective, preferably from an angled view.

Michele Marieschi was both an engraver and a painter of views and capriccios, but the details of his apprenticeship remain unknown. It is generally believed that he absorbed the lessons of the Bellunese artist Gaspare Diziani, who in 1737 was a witness to the preliminaries of his marriage.

Recent documentary discoveries have shed light on his probable early education: his maternal grandfather, Antonio Meneghini, was also a painter, probably specialising in scenography and connected with the impresario Francesco Tasso, who organized festivals involving the use of ephemeral apparatus. In 1763, Marieschi is first registered with the guild of Venetian painters, and in the same year he began his professional relationship with Marshal Johann Matthias Count of Schulenburg, one of his most important patrons. The artist died prematurely in Venice at the age of thirty-four.