Giuseppe Bernardino Bison

Provenace: private collection

Again, this remarkably executed little painting finds its origins in the models invented by one of Bison’s predecessors, Canaletto, whose work was widely diffused...

Provenace: private collection

Again, this remarkably executed little painting finds its origins in the models invented by one of Bison’s predecessors, Canaletto, whose work was widely diffused throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through the engravings by Vicentini (1742), and later those of Giambattista Brustolon (1763-1766).

It is in fact a depiction of one of the sites most favoured by the vedutists: the Church of San Geremia of Venice, with its square tower topped with a statue of its patron saint, whose austere silhouette dominates the entrance to the Cannaregio, one of the city’s six sestieri (boroughs). In a masterful use of contrast, Bison sets the hieratic verticality of the church in deep shadow against the bright façade of several tall houses in the background. Here the artist forgoes the panorama of the magnificent city in its entirety for a distinctly more intimate description of one of its many thoroughfares, dotted with a few choice details, ranging from the tiny figures leaning over the bridge seen framed against the light to the gondola in the foreground, with its bow illuminated by a stray ray of sun.

Bison distances himself from the chromatic diffusion and total vision of Guardi in favour of more narrative and picturesque episodes full of figures. His painterly manner, at once meticulous and full of contrast, is particularly evident in the capturing of the calm, clear water of the canal, with the rounded little waves that are typical of his delicate brushwork.

Palmanova 1762 - Milan 1844

Born in Palmanova in Friuli in 1762, Giuseppe Bernardino Bison occupies a special place among the painters who prolonged the vedutist tradition at the turn of the 18th...