Veneza - Itália
Museu Hermitage, São Petersburgo, Rússia
OST - 180x259 - 1735
In the 18th century the Venetian school of painting
flourished brightly, but for the last time, and gave the world several virtuoso
artists. One of them was Antonio Canal, better known as Canaletto. He was a
superb master of the veduta genre, the accurate urban landscape. This large
canvas, The Reception of the French Ambassador in Venice, recorded a real-life
event – the arrival of the French envoy, Count Languet de Gergy, who was met on
the embankment next to the Palace of the Doges by officials of the republic
accompanied by guards. With documentary precision the artist recorded all the
details of this colourful occasion, beginning with the luxurious boats
decorated with gilded carving in which the ambassador and his retinue arrived.
Such spectacles were an inseparable part of life for the Queen of the Adriatic
and were never short of spectators. There are plenty of those in the painting,
watching from the gallery of the palace, the bridge and gondolas. Among them
are Venetian nobles whose dress often included a mask, merchants from the
Orient, monks and common people. Ruling over this motley crowd is Venice which
is not a setting, but the main protagonist in the work. Look at the passion
with which the artist presents the beauty of its architecture, the uniqueness
of its damp atmosphere and the play of shadows on its walls. Fascinated by his
native city, Canaletto devoted his entire oeuvre to it and it seems there is
not a single corner of Venice that he did not capture with his brush.
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