19th Century, Views Of St Mark’s Square

19th century

Views of St Mark’s Square

(2) Oil on canvas, cm 18x38

With frame, cm 56x91

The two paintings in question, characteristic of the vedutista trend that developed during the nineteenth century in Italy and abroad, depicts a pair of views of Venice, presenting two different views of Piazza San Marco, one taken from the land and the other from the lagoon. The two paintings perfectly capture the unique atmosphere of the lagoon city, with its sparkling waters, gondolas that criss-cross the canals and buildings that are reflected on the water. The term Vedutismo derived precisely from the main subject represented, the so-called views, of the suggestive panoramas imprinted on canvas by the great painters of the time. They differed from the previous landscape paintings precisely because of their highly realistic nature, their almost maniacal attention to detail and the total preponderance of the landscape element: prior to vedutism, In fact, the landscapes were almost exclusively used as panoramas, that is to say the background for the representation of men, women or animals, which remained at the center of the scene. This new artistic trend brought the landscape to take the role of protagonist of the work. The reasons for this success are to be found mainly in the custom of the Grand Tour, the journey made by young sons of the European nobility to discover the continent, which had as its favorite destination Italy: Florence, Rome, Naples and obviously Venice, The most fashionable city of the whole eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, where the British were delighted by the "decadent Italian charm". The main proponents of vedutism used to use the optical camera, a very valuable tool that allowed to represent reality in lenticular way.