Veneza, Vista do Campo e Igreja de Santa Maria Formosa, Veneza, Itália (Venice, a View of the Campo and Church of Santa Maria Formosa) – Bernardo Belotto
Veneza - Itália
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OST - 61x92
In this beautifully preserved canvas, Bernardo Bellotto
depicts the Campo Santa Maria Formosa, one of Venice’s largest and most
distinctive squares, beneath a flinty blue sky. The view is taken from Palazzo
Ruzzini looking to the south, towards the façade and campanile of the square’s
eponymous church of Santa Maria Formosa. To the left of center is the Palazzo
Malapiero Trevisan with its dedicated bridge, and along the far-left side in
shadow are the gothic Palazzi Vitturi and Donà. This magnificent veduta dates
to circa 1738/40, when the young artist was still in his late teens.
Its mastery of light, composition and technique demonstrates how Bellotto, even
at this tender age, was able to rival the work of his uncle, Canaletto, while
also forging his own personal—and more lyrical— style. This painting once
formed part of the famous and influential group of Venetian views ordered in
1738/39 by Henry Howard, 4th Earl of Carlisle while on his second trip to
Venice, for his seat at Castle Howard.
One of the masterpieces of Renaissance architecture in Venice, the church of Santa Maria Formosa was begun by the great architect Mauro Condussi (circa 1440-1504) on the foundation of a much older sanctuary that likely dated to the 7th century. By tradition, the church was the first in the city to be dedicated to the Virgin Mary; Saint Magnus of Oderzo is said to have had a vision of the Virgin who told him to build a church in her honor at the spot beneath a pure white cloud. Indeed, the name of the church is said to derive from this miracle, although there are two accounts. One is that the church was christened “formosa” (Latin for beautiful) after the beauty of the cloud which had signaled its foundation. The more popular story, however, is that the Virgin who appeared to Saint Magnus was of particularly voluptuous form, as the word “formosa” in Latin also has the connotation of “shapely,” or even “buxom.” Whatever the exact overtones of the word, the church is amongst the most beautiful in the city. Built on a Greek Cross design, it was left incomplete at Condussi’s death, and the distinctive cupola was added by his son, most likely based on the father’s design. The land-side façade of the church was rebuilt in 1604 in a restrained Baroque style and decorated with busts of members of the Cappello family, the major patrons of the church from the 16th century onwards. The campanile was also a later addition, being completed in 1688.
While the present canvas is now recognized as an early masterpiece by Bellotto, it has been known to modern scholars for only about the last 30 years. It was not included in Stefan Kozakiewicz’s 1972 catalogue raisonné of Bellotto’s paintings, nor was it mentioned in early editions of W. G. Constable and J.G. Links’ studies of Canaletto, where that artist’s painting of the same view at Woburn Abbey was discussed. This omission is in large part due to the fact that for most of the 20th century the present work remained in the private collection of Sir Max Michaelis and his family, only reappearing in 1991 with the London dealers Harari & Johns. Its importance as a significant early work by Bellotto was further obscured by the painting’s long-carried attribution to Canaletto, a problem then shared by most of the young artist’s early Venetian views. Fortuitously, this painting reappeared right around the time that scholars began to reconstruct this initial phase of the younger painter’s career, and it was Bożena Anna Kowalczyk who first realized that it was in fact the work of Bellotto; in this, she was followed by Dario Succi and Charles Beddington, with only J. G. Links sustaining the traditional attribution to Canaletto. The painting’s inclusion in the landmark 2001 Bellotto exhibition in Venice and Houston only served to confirm its status as a key work of Bellotto’s early career.
As with many of the Venetian compositions from Bellotto's early career, the View of the Campo Santa Maria Formosa was a subject also treated by earlier artists, including his uncle Canaletto. In the early 1730s, Canaletto made a drawing of the square in the same orientation, and he included the view amongst the group of 22 paintings that he made at the behest of the Duke of Bedford (bought between 1732-36 and still at Woburn Abbey). Bellotto, however, also made at least one drawing of the square, now in the collection of the Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt. The staffage in the drawing, particularly in the nearer planes of the composition, relates rather closely to this painting, and corresponds much more closely than with any other painted images of the campo by the artist or his uncle. However, there is a second drawing at Windsor (inv. RCIN 907478) which has traditionally been given to Canaletto, but has more recently been attributed by scholars to Bellotto. In the Windsor sheet, the heavy shading on the left side of the campo is more pronounced than in the Darmstadt study, and the figures relate so closely to the present painting that it seems likely to be the actual preparatory drawing for it.
In this painting, Bellotto casts the east side of the square in shadow, suggesting morning light, and thus charging the view with a dramatic tone. Unlike his uncle’s earlier version at Woburn, he pulls his viewpoint back further and very slightly higher, to create a more sweeping effect and allowing for much more sky above the buildings. He creates further activity in the square by depicting the then-ongoing pavement works in the campo, where the pipes relating to a new well-head in the center of the composition can be seen. In an engraving published in 1742 by Antonio Visentini, the pavement is shown as back in place with the new well-head in position, allowing for a fairly secure terminus ante quem for the present work. Another version of the composition, often attributed to Canaletto, but given by more recent scholars to Bellotto, is in the Cadogan collection. That painting depicts the campo later in the day, with the western light hitting the Palazzo Donà in full force, and a shadow in the near foreground. Bożena Anna Kowalczyk dates the Cadogan painting to 1742, a few years later than the present canvas. In that version, the composition is moved very slightly forward, but the new well-head is in place, with the pavement laid back down.
The first modern owner of the View of the Campo Santa Maria Formosa was Sir Max Michaelis, a British financier of German Jewish origin who made his fortune in South Africa. His collection was formed in the last years of the 19th century and the early 20th century and is in large part preserved in the Old Town House Museum in Capetown, featuring mostly Dutch and Flemish paintings of the Golden Age, including works by Frans Hals, Melchior de Hondecoeter, Jacob van Ruisdael, and Jan Steen, amongst other masters. This gift, made in 1914 and which would eventually occasion his knighthood, created for the public one of the most significant collections of Northern Baroque painting outside of Europe. However, not all of his paintings were sent to the museum, and his family retained some other works for themselves, including the present.
In an inventory made for insurance purposes in April 1896 there are listed— apart from the British, Dutch and Flemish paintings that made up most of Sir Max Michaelis’ holdings— two painting by Canaletto, valued at £750 with the note “to be collected from Colnaghi’s.” Even though their subjects were not specified and their attributions were mistaken, the present canvas was one of those two paintings. The other canvas, of the same size and format, depicted a View of the Grand Canal, from the Palazzo Flangini to the Palazzo Vendramin Calergi. That work remained in the Michaelis family until 1998, when it was offered for auction in London, making the then second highest price ever for a work by Bellotto. When both of these paintings appeared on the market within a few years of each other, their history prior to Michaelis had not been studied. It was soon after the second was sold at public auction, however, that their earlier provenance was first deduced.
Continuing the work of his colleagues in elucidating the early career of Bellotto, Dario Succi published in 1999 an important article on the very early career of Bellotto, with a particular focus on his contributions to one of the first and most important collections of Venetian vedute assembled in Georgian England—that commissioned by Henry Howard, 4th Earl of Carlisle, for his country seat in Yorkshire, Castle Howard. It had long been understood that the view paintings at Castle Howard had been ordered at the time of the 4th Earl’s second trip to Venice in 1738/39, and that it included the works not just of Canaletto—then the most famous practitioner of the genre—but naturally also of his nephew Bernardo Bellotto as well as Michele Marieschi and Giovanni Battista Cimaroli. These paintings numbered as many as 40 at one time, many of them eventually hanging in the famous “Canaletto Room” as well as in other locations in the house, moving place and arrangement at various times. Early inventories and contemporary descriptions of Castle Howard often discuss the paintings as a group and without specifying what they depicted, thus making it difficult to identify which views where hung where (much less which were by whom, as the Bellottos began to be regarded as by Canaletto). As early as a visit in spring of 1745 by Henriette, Countess of Oxford, the Venetian vedute were on view in both the so-called “Blue Coffoy Drawing Room” and in Lady Carlisle’s private quarters. In a recent communication, Dario Succi has confirmed that he believes that this View of the Campo and Church of Santa Maria Formosa was amongst the paintings that first hung in the Blue Coffoy Drawing Room probably by 1743 but certainly by 1759. Before 1837, 18 paintings—4 by Canaletto and 14 by Bellotto—were moved to the adjacent Dining Room, which in the late 19th century would be christened the “Canaletto Room.”
In his discussion of paintings that had left the Castle Howard collections, including what is arguably Canaletto’s masterpiece, the View of the Bacino di San Marco, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Succi identified a number of works by both Marieschi and Bellotto that had been sold by the 9th Earl of Carlisle to various London dealers in 1895, 1897, and 1898. Amongst the group, he identifies the two ex-Michaelis paintings as having been two sold from Castle Howard at that time. In his opinion, the connection was confirmed by the matching size and format of the canvases to works still in the Castle Howard collection and by their appearance on the market right after the sale. He further notes the strong stylistic connection of the View of Santa Maria Formosa with the depiction of the Campo Santo Stefano by Bellotto still at Castle Howard, also of the same size and format, and even the same date—an affinity that had previously been noted by Kowalczyk. Indeed, their almost immediate appearance in the 1896 insurance listing of the collection of Sir Max Michaelis allows us to confirm that they were numbers 52 and 54 on the inventories of the paintings at Castle Howard drawn up by John Duthie in 1878 and 1880, where both are listed there as hanging in the Dining Room (later Canaletto Room) as by “Canaletti” with the generic title of “A View of Venice” and both “Canvas 24 inches High 35 Wide.” On the left-hand page across from their description their disposition is updated by the same hand (although clearly with a more casual grip on the pen). First that they were two of “3 of this Size sent to Mr. G Donaldson/ Esq 106 New Bond Street London.” This is followed, presumably soon after, by notations of their sale: “Aug 16 95 Sold to Donaldson £150.” The Donaldson mentioned is Sir George Donaldson, a gentleman dealer with a gallery at 106 New Bond Street. Two larger paintings by Bellotto which were sold that same year to Colnaghi are now in the Louvre. Thus, it seems likely that while Donaldson was the purchaser of record, the eventual plan was to offer the two views to Max Michaelis by Colnaghi, his preferred dealer.
What has never been previously remarked upon, however, is a piece of physical evidence for the Castle Howard provenance which is supplied by a photograph of a group of the Venetian views hanging there dating to early June 1927. In that image, three ranks of paintings are hung, with two large views of the Piazza San Marco and the Palazzo Ducale from the Bacino in Kentian frames on the bottom, and two rows of three paintings, of the same size and format as the present painting, above. Three of these are in relatively simple frames, including the View of Campo Santo Stefano by Bellotto mentioned earlier. However, the other three—Views of San Francesco della Vigna, the Bacino with the Dogana and the Grand Canal from Santa Croce—are all in the same elaborate rococo style English frames as the present View of Santa Maria Formosa. In the years since the photo, a number of paintings were destroyed in a fire in 1940, including the three Bellottos in the black and white photograph in the rococo frames, but it is clear that the present painting, and almost certainly the View of the Grand Canal, from the Palazzo Flangini to the Palazzo Vendramin Calergi which acted as its pendant while in the Michaelis collection, were both in the same style frame, made en suite with a number of other Venetian views in the Castle Howard collection. Not all of the frames of the group matched, as is evident in the photograph, but an informative comparison may also be made with one of the grand paintings by Gianpaolo Panini collected by the 4th Earl on the same 1738/39 Italian trip, a Capriccio of Roman Ruins. While not of the same exact style as the frames placed on the smaller format Venetian paintings, its frame is of a similar enough style to suggest that it too may have been produced by the same maker. This was likely to be the great rococo carver and frame maker, Paul Petit, who the 4th Earl commissioned to produce several frames for the paintings that had arrived from Italy by June of 1740. Petit was a carver of extraordinary ability and worked for other patrons, including Frederick, Prince of Wales. A record of a payment for £64.1s made by the Earl to Petit is dated April 1744 and was for a group of 15 carved and gilt frames, which serves to confirm the esteem with which the view paintings were held by their first owner. Certainly, the expense was worthy of “la più numerosa e importante collezione in Europa, dopo quella di Joseph Smith, di vedute veneziane del Settecento.”
We are grateful to Dr. Dario Succi for his assistance in clarifying and confirming the Castle Howard provenance.
One of the masterpieces of Renaissance architecture in Venice, the church of Santa Maria Formosa was begun by the great architect Mauro Condussi (circa 1440-1504) on the foundation of a much older sanctuary that likely dated to the 7th century. By tradition, the church was the first in the city to be dedicated to the Virgin Mary; Saint Magnus of Oderzo is said to have had a vision of the Virgin who told him to build a church in her honor at the spot beneath a pure white cloud. Indeed, the name of the church is said to derive from this miracle, although there are two accounts. One is that the church was christened “formosa” (Latin for beautiful) after the beauty of the cloud which had signaled its foundation. The more popular story, however, is that the Virgin who appeared to Saint Magnus was of particularly voluptuous form, as the word “formosa” in Latin also has the connotation of “shapely,” or even “buxom.” Whatever the exact overtones of the word, the church is amongst the most beautiful in the city. Built on a Greek Cross design, it was left incomplete at Condussi’s death, and the distinctive cupola was added by his son, most likely based on the father’s design. The land-side façade of the church was rebuilt in 1604 in a restrained Baroque style and decorated with busts of members of the Cappello family, the major patrons of the church from the 16th century onwards. The campanile was also a later addition, being completed in 1688.
While the present canvas is now recognized as an early masterpiece by Bellotto, it has been known to modern scholars for only about the last 30 years. It was not included in Stefan Kozakiewicz’s 1972 catalogue raisonné of Bellotto’s paintings, nor was it mentioned in early editions of W. G. Constable and J.G. Links’ studies of Canaletto, where that artist’s painting of the same view at Woburn Abbey was discussed. This omission is in large part due to the fact that for most of the 20th century the present work remained in the private collection of Sir Max Michaelis and his family, only reappearing in 1991 with the London dealers Harari & Johns. Its importance as a significant early work by Bellotto was further obscured by the painting’s long-carried attribution to Canaletto, a problem then shared by most of the young artist’s early Venetian views. Fortuitously, this painting reappeared right around the time that scholars began to reconstruct this initial phase of the younger painter’s career, and it was Bożena Anna Kowalczyk who first realized that it was in fact the work of Bellotto; in this, she was followed by Dario Succi and Charles Beddington, with only J. G. Links sustaining the traditional attribution to Canaletto. The painting’s inclusion in the landmark 2001 Bellotto exhibition in Venice and Houston only served to confirm its status as a key work of Bellotto’s early career.
As with many of the Venetian compositions from Bellotto's early career, the View of the Campo Santa Maria Formosa was a subject also treated by earlier artists, including his uncle Canaletto. In the early 1730s, Canaletto made a drawing of the square in the same orientation, and he included the view amongst the group of 22 paintings that he made at the behest of the Duke of Bedford (bought between 1732-36 and still at Woburn Abbey). Bellotto, however, also made at least one drawing of the square, now in the collection of the Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt. The staffage in the drawing, particularly in the nearer planes of the composition, relates rather closely to this painting, and corresponds much more closely than with any other painted images of the campo by the artist or his uncle. However, there is a second drawing at Windsor (inv. RCIN 907478) which has traditionally been given to Canaletto, but has more recently been attributed by scholars to Bellotto. In the Windsor sheet, the heavy shading on the left side of the campo is more pronounced than in the Darmstadt study, and the figures relate so closely to the present painting that it seems likely to be the actual preparatory drawing for it.
In this painting, Bellotto casts the east side of the square in shadow, suggesting morning light, and thus charging the view with a dramatic tone. Unlike his uncle’s earlier version at Woburn, he pulls his viewpoint back further and very slightly higher, to create a more sweeping effect and allowing for much more sky above the buildings. He creates further activity in the square by depicting the then-ongoing pavement works in the campo, where the pipes relating to a new well-head in the center of the composition can be seen. In an engraving published in 1742 by Antonio Visentini, the pavement is shown as back in place with the new well-head in position, allowing for a fairly secure terminus ante quem for the present work. Another version of the composition, often attributed to Canaletto, but given by more recent scholars to Bellotto, is in the Cadogan collection. That painting depicts the campo later in the day, with the western light hitting the Palazzo Donà in full force, and a shadow in the near foreground. Bożena Anna Kowalczyk dates the Cadogan painting to 1742, a few years later than the present canvas. In that version, the composition is moved very slightly forward, but the new well-head is in place, with the pavement laid back down.
The first modern owner of the View of the Campo Santa Maria Formosa was Sir Max Michaelis, a British financier of German Jewish origin who made his fortune in South Africa. His collection was formed in the last years of the 19th century and the early 20th century and is in large part preserved in the Old Town House Museum in Capetown, featuring mostly Dutch and Flemish paintings of the Golden Age, including works by Frans Hals, Melchior de Hondecoeter, Jacob van Ruisdael, and Jan Steen, amongst other masters. This gift, made in 1914 and which would eventually occasion his knighthood, created for the public one of the most significant collections of Northern Baroque painting outside of Europe. However, not all of his paintings were sent to the museum, and his family retained some other works for themselves, including the present.
In an inventory made for insurance purposes in April 1896 there are listed— apart from the British, Dutch and Flemish paintings that made up most of Sir Max Michaelis’ holdings— two painting by Canaletto, valued at £750 with the note “to be collected from Colnaghi’s.” Even though their subjects were not specified and their attributions were mistaken, the present canvas was one of those two paintings. The other canvas, of the same size and format, depicted a View of the Grand Canal, from the Palazzo Flangini to the Palazzo Vendramin Calergi. That work remained in the Michaelis family until 1998, when it was offered for auction in London, making the then second highest price ever for a work by Bellotto. When both of these paintings appeared on the market within a few years of each other, their history prior to Michaelis had not been studied. It was soon after the second was sold at public auction, however, that their earlier provenance was first deduced.
Continuing the work of his colleagues in elucidating the early career of Bellotto, Dario Succi published in 1999 an important article on the very early career of Bellotto, with a particular focus on his contributions to one of the first and most important collections of Venetian vedute assembled in Georgian England—that commissioned by Henry Howard, 4th Earl of Carlisle, for his country seat in Yorkshire, Castle Howard. It had long been understood that the view paintings at Castle Howard had been ordered at the time of the 4th Earl’s second trip to Venice in 1738/39, and that it included the works not just of Canaletto—then the most famous practitioner of the genre—but naturally also of his nephew Bernardo Bellotto as well as Michele Marieschi and Giovanni Battista Cimaroli. These paintings numbered as many as 40 at one time, many of them eventually hanging in the famous “Canaletto Room” as well as in other locations in the house, moving place and arrangement at various times. Early inventories and contemporary descriptions of Castle Howard often discuss the paintings as a group and without specifying what they depicted, thus making it difficult to identify which views where hung where (much less which were by whom, as the Bellottos began to be regarded as by Canaletto). As early as a visit in spring of 1745 by Henriette, Countess of Oxford, the Venetian vedute were on view in both the so-called “Blue Coffoy Drawing Room” and in Lady Carlisle’s private quarters. In a recent communication, Dario Succi has confirmed that he believes that this View of the Campo and Church of Santa Maria Formosa was amongst the paintings that first hung in the Blue Coffoy Drawing Room probably by 1743 but certainly by 1759. Before 1837, 18 paintings—4 by Canaletto and 14 by Bellotto—were moved to the adjacent Dining Room, which in the late 19th century would be christened the “Canaletto Room.”
In his discussion of paintings that had left the Castle Howard collections, including what is arguably Canaletto’s masterpiece, the View of the Bacino di San Marco, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Succi identified a number of works by both Marieschi and Bellotto that had been sold by the 9th Earl of Carlisle to various London dealers in 1895, 1897, and 1898. Amongst the group, he identifies the two ex-Michaelis paintings as having been two sold from Castle Howard at that time. In his opinion, the connection was confirmed by the matching size and format of the canvases to works still in the Castle Howard collection and by their appearance on the market right after the sale. He further notes the strong stylistic connection of the View of Santa Maria Formosa with the depiction of the Campo Santo Stefano by Bellotto still at Castle Howard, also of the same size and format, and even the same date—an affinity that had previously been noted by Kowalczyk. Indeed, their almost immediate appearance in the 1896 insurance listing of the collection of Sir Max Michaelis allows us to confirm that they were numbers 52 and 54 on the inventories of the paintings at Castle Howard drawn up by John Duthie in 1878 and 1880, where both are listed there as hanging in the Dining Room (later Canaletto Room) as by “Canaletti” with the generic title of “A View of Venice” and both “Canvas 24 inches High 35 Wide.” On the left-hand page across from their description their disposition is updated by the same hand (although clearly with a more casual grip on the pen). First that they were two of “3 of this Size sent to Mr. G Donaldson/ Esq 106 New Bond Street London.” This is followed, presumably soon after, by notations of their sale: “Aug 16 95 Sold to Donaldson £150.” The Donaldson mentioned is Sir George Donaldson, a gentleman dealer with a gallery at 106 New Bond Street. Two larger paintings by Bellotto which were sold that same year to Colnaghi are now in the Louvre. Thus, it seems likely that while Donaldson was the purchaser of record, the eventual plan was to offer the two views to Max Michaelis by Colnaghi, his preferred dealer.
What has never been previously remarked upon, however, is a piece of physical evidence for the Castle Howard provenance which is supplied by a photograph of a group of the Venetian views hanging there dating to early June 1927. In that image, three ranks of paintings are hung, with two large views of the Piazza San Marco and the Palazzo Ducale from the Bacino in Kentian frames on the bottom, and two rows of three paintings, of the same size and format as the present painting, above. Three of these are in relatively simple frames, including the View of Campo Santo Stefano by Bellotto mentioned earlier. However, the other three—Views of San Francesco della Vigna, the Bacino with the Dogana and the Grand Canal from Santa Croce—are all in the same elaborate rococo style English frames as the present View of Santa Maria Formosa. In the years since the photo, a number of paintings were destroyed in a fire in 1940, including the three Bellottos in the black and white photograph in the rococo frames, but it is clear that the present painting, and almost certainly the View of the Grand Canal, from the Palazzo Flangini to the Palazzo Vendramin Calergi which acted as its pendant while in the Michaelis collection, were both in the same style frame, made en suite with a number of other Venetian views in the Castle Howard collection. Not all of the frames of the group matched, as is evident in the photograph, but an informative comparison may also be made with one of the grand paintings by Gianpaolo Panini collected by the 4th Earl on the same 1738/39 Italian trip, a Capriccio of Roman Ruins. While not of the same exact style as the frames placed on the smaller format Venetian paintings, its frame is of a similar enough style to suggest that it too may have been produced by the same maker. This was likely to be the great rococo carver and frame maker, Paul Petit, who the 4th Earl commissioned to produce several frames for the paintings that had arrived from Italy by June of 1740. Petit was a carver of extraordinary ability and worked for other patrons, including Frederick, Prince of Wales. A record of a payment for £64.1s made by the Earl to Petit is dated April 1744 and was for a group of 15 carved and gilt frames, which serves to confirm the esteem with which the view paintings were held by their first owner. Certainly, the expense was worthy of “la più numerosa e importante collezione in Europa, dopo quella di Joseph Smith, di vedute veneziane del Settecento.”
We are grateful to Dr. Dario Succi for his assistance in clarifying and confirming the Castle Howard provenance.
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