Santa Maria della Salute e Entrada do Grande Canal, Veneza, Itália (Venice, Santa Maria della Salute and the Entrance to the Grand Canal) - Gaspar van Wittel
Veneza - Itália
Coleção privada
OST - 47x77
Although perhaps not single-handedly responsible, as the great Italian scholar Giulio Briganti claimed, for ‘inaugurating the history of Venetian views’, there is no doubt that the young Netherlander Gaspar van Wittel was of seminal importance in their development. While he spent much of his life in Rome, where he had settled around 1674 and was known as Vanvitelli, he visited Venice on at least one occasion, probably in 1695, and the drawings he made there form the basis for what may be considered among the very first real Venetian vedute or view paintings. There are three such drawings which are preparatory for this composition, which depicts the entrance to the Grand Canal and constitutes one of the most famous of all Venetian vistas. Known to scholars previously only from photographs and thus unseen in public for over fifty years, this elegant painting epitomizes Vanvitelli’s detailed and colourful style. Although his Venetian views such as this were not numerous in type, Vanvitelli’s compositions exercised a profound influence on the succeeding generation of painters of vedute, among them Canaletto and Francesco Guardi.
The view is taken from the centre of the Grand Canal, looking west along it with the great church of Santa Maria della Salute, Baldassare Longhena’s Baroque masterpiece begun in 1631, dominating the left side of the composition. Behind this stands the Gothic Abbey of San Gregorio with its distinctive crested gable. Alongside the abbey can be glimpsed the tower of the Palazzo Venier delle Torreselle, built in the fifteenth century but destroyed in the eighteenth, and the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni. In the background, on the bend of the canal, can be see the campanile of the Church of the Carità, also now destroyed. On the facing side of the Grand Canal we see the Palazzo Corner, today the seat of the Venetian Prefecture, and nearer to us, the Palazzo Tiepolo. The façade of the Salute is bathed in sunlight, and the whole scene is depicted in a clear and even light, with the bustling waterway of the Grand Canal itself alive with gondolas, barges and other craft of all types and sizes.
The exact dates or the length of time spent by Vanvitelli in Venice are not known for certain. According to his biographer Lione Pascoli, writing in the eighteenth century, he stayed briefly in the city in 1677 on his way to Rome. Later it seems that he travelled through Northern Italy on two different occasions; first in 1690 and then in 1694; either of these could have included a stay in Venice although the latter seems more likely. On both occasions he travelled to numerous cities – Florence, Bologna, and Verona amongst others – spending a few months in each place, drawing and painting views there. According to Pascoli, he continued north after staying in Bologna in December 1694, probably arriving in Venice the following spring. In any case, a secure terminus ante quem for Vanvitelli’s presence in Venice is provided by a View of the Molo in the Prado in Madrid, which is signed and dated 1697. Briganti listed six preparatory drawings of Venetian subjects, and at least forty paintings have survived. The last of Vanvitelli’s dated views of Venice is from 1721 (private collection, Prague), and both this and another of 1717 (location unknown) are clearly inscribed stating that they were executed in Rome, probably from drawings done by the artist in situ many years earlier.
In the case of the present painting, no less than three preliminary drawings for this composition have survived. All are today preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emmanuele in Rome and provide an important insight into Vanvitelli’s working methods. Although Laureati does not indicate a date for them, they are very likely related to Vanvitelli’s visit made to the city in 1694–95. The viewpoint is low and must have been taken from a boat near the entrance to the Grand Canal. In the first two drawings, in pen and ink and wash, Vanvitelli carefully defines the details of the architecture, before subsequently adding grey washes in order to establish the requisite areas of light and shadow. In the third and smallest drawing, partly drawn in red chalk, he makes some final detailed adjustments to the perspective in certain areas. All three drawings are squared for transfer and formed the basis for a group of some seven paintings of the same view, all with minor variations in the disposition of the gondolas and other craft as well as the figures. Three (and probably four) of these are of very similar dimensions to the present painting (roughly 45 x 75 cm.): in addition to the present work these are in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, a private collection, and those sold Cologne, Lempertz, in 2001, and London, Christie’s, in 2003. Of these, two, those in Munich and that sold at Lempertz, are painted on copper, and the remainder on canvas. A larger canvas is recorded by Briganti in the Colonna Gallery in Rome, and a smaller gouache is preserved at Holkham Hall in Norfolk. Only two of the group are dated: the earliest is the copper in Munich, which is dated 1706, and the latest that sold at Christie’s, which is dated 1710 and inscribed ‘Roma’, indicating that it was painted from the drawings after Vanvitelli’s return to Rome. Of the group only the present canvas, that in a private collection and that sold at Lempertz are not known to have had pendants. That in Munich was paired with a View of the Molo, Piazzetta and Palazzo Ducale, the Colonna canvas with a Piazzetta from the Bacino di San Marco, the ex-Christie’s view with a View of San Giorgio Maggiore, while the Holkham gouache formed part of a set of four views including Tevere a San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, The Palazzo Farnese from Caprarola, and The Darsena in Naples.
