Veneza - Itália
National Gallery Londres
OST - 124x163 - Aproximadamente 1725
The Stonemason's
Yard (formally
known as Campo S. Vidal
and Santa Maria della Carità) is an early oil painting by Giovanni Antonio Canal, better known as Canaletto. It depicts an informal scene in Venice, looking over a temporary stonemason's yard in the Campo San Vidal and across the Grand Canal towards the church of Santa Maria della
Carità. Painted in the mid to late 1720s, it is considered one of
Canaletto's finest works.
The painting
measures 123.8 by 162.9 centimetres (48.7 in × 64.1 in).[1] It depicts a Venetian scene looking
roughly southwest over a temporary stonemason's yard situated in an open space
beside the Grand
Canal known as the Campo San Vidal ("campo",
literally field, used in Venice to denote a small open space). Several masons
are at work shaping and carving stone probably destined for the reconstruction
of the nearby church
of San Vidal (immediately behind the viewer and so not visible
in the painting; its Palladian façade
was renovated in the 1730s) or possibly for the embellishment of a nearby palazzo (the Palazzo Cavalli-Franchetti and Palazzo Barbaro are
close by, to the viewer's left). The side of the medieval church of Santa
Maria della Carità, reconstructed in the 1440s, stands on the
opposite bank of the Grand Canal, to the left of the façade of the Scuola Grande della Carità; the tower of the church of San Trovaso is visible
rising over the rooftops in the distance.
In addition to the architectural
details, The Stonemason's Yard shows
scenes of daily life in Venice, probably in the early morning: a cock crows on
a windowsill to the lower left, and sunlight streams in from the left behind
the viewer's (east). The mainly domestic buildings are generally in poor
repair, with typical Venetian flared chimney-pots. Laundry hangs from many of
the windows, and pot plants stand on several balconies. One woman is using
a distaff and drop spindle to spin thread
on a balcony to the right; another draws water from a well in the campo beside
a wooden shed, from a well-head shaped
like the capital of
a column. Two children are playing in the foreground to the left: one is
falling over and urinating involuntarily in surprise, as a woman lunges forward
to catch him; another woman looks down from a balcony above. A gondola with canopied
cabin passes on the canal, with others moored on either bank.
Unsigned and undated, the painting is
attributed and dated by stylistic clues. It seems to combine features of
Canaletto's early and mature styles, for example in the use of two
undercolours. It is a very early example of using Prussian blue in oil
painting. Canaletto painted The
Stonemason's Yard before 1730 while Prussian blue was discovered
by Johann
Jacob Diesbach in 1704. Amongst other pigments used by
Canaletto in this painting were Naples yellow, lead white and ochres.
The informal scene is thought to have been
painted for a Venetian patron, rather than a foreign visitor to Venice, in the
mid to late 1720s. Unlike many views painted by Canaletto and his
fellow vedutisti, the location has
changed significantly since the 1720s. The view of the opposite bank of the
Grand Canal is now blocked by the high arch of the modern wooden Accademia bridge, and the
church of the Carità has been much altered. The campanile fell down in 1744,
demolishing the houses beside the canal in front, and much of the other
stonework has been removed. The nave became the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia in the 1800s, and
the Gallerie
dell'Accademia is housed in the Scuola. The Campo remains an
open space, with the well-head at its centre. The domestic building to the
right remains standing.
The early ownership of The Stonemason's Yard is not
known. It was in the collection of Sir George Beaumont by 1808, and was one of the
paintings Beaumont donated to the British Museum in
1823, to form the nucleus of the National
Gallery's nascent collection. It passed to the National Gallery in
1828, where it continues to be exhibited. It was extensively cleaned
by John Seguier in 1852 - so extensively that a Select
Committee investigated the cleaning practices of the National Gallery - and was
cleaned again in 1955, and then restored, relined and remounted in 1989. Some
early retouchings, clouds now concealed under later glazings, may have been
done in Beaumont's time by John Constable.
