One of the most famous collections at the Gulbenkian Museum is represented by the splendid paintings of Francesco Guardi (1712-1793), the last great Venetian view painter of the Eighteenth Century, acquired in the first two decades of the Twentieth Century.
These are some of the artist's most sublime works, famous for having started painting views in his mature age, after years of experimentation in the fields of history and genre painting. All dated between 1770 and 1790, Guardi's works at the Gulbenkian Museum are an extraordinary testimony to the artist's style, characterized by allusive brushstrokes and freely distorted proportions that create views in which the perspective structure appears elastic.
Now distant from the geometric certainties of Canaletto and his camera obscura, the Venice portrayed by Francesco Guardi is composed of buildings corroded by light, rendered through a shimmering painting, as if the painter wants to offer an inner image of the city and a civilization, that of Venice, now in rapid decline. The subjects are those explored by the artist on various occasions, such as the Festa della Sensa in Piazza San Marco, the Regattas on the Grand Canal, and the Departure of the Bucentaur.
Thanks to the collaboration between the Foundation of Civic Museums of Venice and the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, it is possible to admire in the portego of Ca’ Rezzonico a selection of these paintings by Francesco Guardi along with a group of sheets from the collections of the Cabinet of drawings and prints, in a dialogue between painting and graphic art aimed at deepening the creative journey of one of the iconic artists of the Venetian Eighteenth Century.
Photo credits Foundation of Civic Museums of Venice
