Giovanni Francesco Costa - An Architectural Caprice

AN ARCHIECTURAL CAPRICCIO
Pen & ink with grey wash on laid paper
23.5 x 34.5 cm

Costa was a pupil of the painters and set designers Gerolamo Mengozzi-Colonna and Giambattista Crosato, and followed in their footsteps as a set designer himself, working largely for the Venetian theatres belonging to the House of Grimani in Venice.

Between 1750 and 1756, Costa provided the illustrations for the two volumes of Delle Delicie del Fiume Brenta, which depicted palazzi and casini all along the Brenta from Padua to Venice. It was an imposing tome, comprising a series of 140 engravings which reproduced the sumptuous residences of the Venetian aristocracy located outside the densely-populated lagoon. It required several years of hard study and travel, comprising meticulous surveys carried out with the help of the optical camera. The Delicie were a remarkable success, running to several editions.

From 1761 onwards, Costa resumed his work as a set designer for the Grimani, later designing a brand-new theatre, as well as working briefly for King Stanislaus II of Poland. From 1767, the artist's name appears in the Proceedings of the Venetian Academy as accademico aggregato e maestro dello studio dell'architettura (an Associate Academician and Professor of Architecture). He seems only to have held the post briefly, as Costa's worsening eyesight led to his ceasing to teach in 1769, and ill-health led to his resignation two years later.

Costa's style as a draughtsman is distinctive, though his work has often been confused with his near-contemporary Antonio Visentini. It is clearly - and, from a commercial perspective, perhaps unsurprisingly - indebted to Canaletto, with the same combination of almost golden sepia ink lines and grey washes, crisp architectonic lines and elaborate neoclassical ruins that one also sees in the drawings of Tironi and Guardi on occasion.