Provenance: private collection
This magnificent pair of views of Venice plunge lovers of vedutti into the heart of the town’s splendour at the end of the 18th century. Presented with a...
read moreProvenance: private collection
This magnificent pair of views of Venice plunge lovers of vedutti into the heart of the town’s splendour at the end of the 18th century. Presented with a brilliant sense of perspective, the Rialto Bridge rises up in the background of the painting. In the foreground, the gondoliers sail their boats along the calm, limpid water, in changing shades of blue. Passers-by in richly-coloured clothes are strolling along the banks of the Canal. They also feature in the second painting, in the centre of the Piazetta, gossiping among themselves while others do business. Painted in small touches of energetic colours, these characters delicately punctuate these two admirable paintings. The point of the Customs House juts out in the distance followed by the Santa Maria della Salute in all its majesty.
At the end of the 17th century, the islands of the Venetian lagoon were the source of inspiration for a variety of pictorial representations. The cosmographer Vincenzo Coronelli was the first to point out the strangely calm charm emanating from the islands of the Serenissima in the Isolario dell’Atlante Veneto (1696-1698). Numerous painters followed, such as Canaletto and Guardi, who developed a style of painting enjoyed by European travellers arriving in Italy, which was the crucial point of their Grand Tour. These enthusiasts and travellers succumbed to the charm of these lagoon views, which elegantly link land and sea.
Nothing seems capable of disturbing the peace that emanates from these two canvasses. The azure blue sky is dotted with a cloud or two, while the rays of the late afternoon sun continue to shine on the stone. Fabulous light and shade effects animate the buildings and the rendering of perspective, proof of our artist’s great talent. The refined palette and the effects of the subject give these two views a melancholy air particular to Tironi. Indeed, while the canals appear tranquil and the great buildings unshakeable, Venice nevertheless shows traces of a former prosperity, the premise of an uncertain destiny.
A fabulous account of Venice before the Napoleonic wars, and a dense and captivating work illustrating the artist’s maturity, our pair of vedutti definitely has a pre-romantic thread running through it. Tironi’s manner of painting, which is both energetic and contrasted, is reminiscent of Guardi’s works, relayed by expressive lighting effects that reinforce the tension therein. It is here, in this significant ambivalence between the vestiges of a past glory and the birth of romantic precepts, that all the nostalgic poetry of the art of Francesco Tironi is so forcefully deployed.
Few biographical details have been established for this mysterious painter. Ordained to the priesthood, Francesco Tironi died in Venice on March 1797, at the age of only 52.
