Venice: Campo San Francesco della Vigna c.1735-40
Pen and ink, over free and ruled pencil and pinpointing | 27.3 x 37.7 cm (sheet of paper) | RCIN 907494
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A drawing of Campo San Francesco della Vigna in Venice. On the left are the buildings of the Franciscan monastery, and on the right is the church of San Francesco della Vigna, with its belltower behind. Many figures populate the square, and some are shown at the large well-head on the left hand side.
The church of San Francesco della Vigna is situated in a quiet area in the north-east of Venice little visited by tourists. It was founded in the thirteenth century on the site of a vineyard, hence its name, and was rebuilt after 1534 by Sansovino, with the façade added in the 1560s by Palladio. The belltower to the rear of the church, one of the tallest in Venice, was completed in 1581 in emulation of that of San Marco.
Canaletto took a wide-angle view from the west side of the Campo in front of the church, and included the top of belltower, visible from all over the city but hidden behind the façade when standing in front of the church. To the left are the low buildings of the Franciscan monastery, suppressed in 1810 and subsequently completely rebuilt. To the right, partially blocking the view of the façade, is the sixteenth-century Palazzo Gritti (or della Nunziatura). The palazzo actually obscures more of the façade of the church than Canaletto has drawn; a corresponding painting from the Harvey group (private collection of the early 1730s) shows the correct arrangement of the buildings, and that feature was followed in an enlarged version of the drawing by Bellotto at Darmstadt (AE 2217), which however agrees in most other details with the present sheet. Bellotto was thus not simply copying Canaletto’s finished drawing, but both probably based their drawings on the same source material in the studio, material that Canaletto adjusted in that detail.
Catalogue entry adapted from Canaletto in Venice, London, 2005Provenance
Purchased by George III from Consul Joseph Smith, 1762
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Medium and techniques
Pen and ink, over free and ruled pencil and pinpointing
Measurements
27.3 x 37.7 cm (sheet of paper)
Other number(s)
RL 7494