Giacomo Guardi - vendere e comprare opere

13 April 1764, Venice (Italy) - 3 November 1835, Venice (Italy)

Giacomo Guardi was a Venetian painter who specialised in the production of views and vedute of his native town. His works exhibit a great atmospheric charm and are of huge historical value.

The son of the famous Venetian vedutista Francesco Guardi, Giacomo Guardi followed in his father’s footsteps in his preference for atmospherically rendered topographical views, although unlike the former he primarily concentrated on small formats. In the nineteenth century, his countless impressive views of Venice attracted the interest of collectors and museums.

Such works as ‘View of the Chiesa della Salute with the Punta della Dogana’ (Fondazione Caripolo, Mailand) or the famous ‘View through a Gate of the Piazza San Marco and the Campanile’ from 1795 (Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main) can pass as Giacomo Guardi’s masterpieces.

As an artist, Guardi committed himself to the continuation of the ideas of the great tradition of Venetian Baroque art at a time when Neoclassicism and Romanticism had come to prevail. Nevertheless, his scenes of Venice also have Neoclassical and Romanticist elements. His ouevre is thus a fascinating embodiment of this historical transition.

His drawings of Venetian squares and canals like the Piazza San Marco, the Grand Canal, or the Giudecca, most of which are executed in mixed media, are not only significant in terms of art history, but also regarding the history of the town as such. Emulating his father Francesco’s style, he similarly sought to convey the light and atmosphere of a certain scene. Being highly accurate, his drawn vedute nevertheless do without the sharp precision of Canaletto’s renderings: in Giacomo Guardi’s art, everything is in constant motion.

Guardi’s works are preserved by prominent museums around the globe, such as at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery in Washington, D. C., the Courtauld Institute in London, the Albertina in Vienna, the Museo Pezzoli in Milan, and Palazzo Montanari in Vicenza.