.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This recently rediscovered painting is Canaletto's earliest documented work, described in 1736, when he was only thirty-nine years old, as in his 'prima maniera'. It thus constitutes vital evidence for a reassessment of the artist's often misunderstood early years, having a bearing on the attribution of a number of other early works whose authenticity has hitherto been considered less than certain.
The inventory number which it still bears is that of the posthumous inventory of the collection of the present owner's ancestor, Field Marshal Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg (1661-1747), who was, with Consul Smith, the greatest foreign patron of painters and collector of paintings resident in Venice in the eighteenth century. A professional soldier of Saxon origin who had fought in most of the great European wars of his time, Schulenburg's defence of Corfu against the Turks in 1715 and 1716 had made him a hero to the Venetians, who erected a statue in his honour and granted him a life pension. He decided to retire to Venice and established himself at Palazzo Loredan on the Grand Canal near San Trovaso. There, in 1724, at the age of sixty-three, he found himself in possession of a group of eighty-eight paintings, mainly from the collections of the Dukes of Mantua, which were ceded to him by a dealer named Giovanni Battista Rota who had defaulted on a loan. This awakened in the Marshal a voracious appetite for collecting and in the remaining two decades of his life he amassed over nine hundred and fifty pictures. Schulenburg's purchases accelerated in the 1730s and in 1736 he began to send regular shipments of paintings back to his estates in Germany. A bachelor, he bequeathed the whole of his vast collection to his nephew with the request that it be preserved intact, but about 150 pictures, including many of the finest, were dispersed at Christie's as early as 1775 (12-13 April), and more have been sold in London auctions since 1982.
Schulenburg's collection is significant not only for the masterpieces by Piazzetta, Ceruti, Pittoni, Marieschi, Carlevarijs and others which it contained, but also for the extent of the documentation which survives in the Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv in Hannover. This makes the attributions (and often dating) of works by contemporaries as reliable as those for artists of the past are fanciful (the collection included pictures attributed to Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt). Until recently none of the six paintings by Canaletto described in some detail in the Schulenburg inventories had been identified and Professor Francis Haskell could state that 'with one of two important exceptions he owned nothing by Canaletto' and could list Canaletto among 'painters who were represented rather weakly' in the collection (F. Haskell, Patrons and Painters: Art and Society in Baroque Italy, New Haven and London, 1980, pp. 314 and 315). In fact, as Alice Binion has established (op. cit., 1990, p. 118), it included one of the artist's supreme masterpieces, The Riva degli Schiavoni, looking West from S. Biagio now in Sir John Soane's Museum, London, for which a payment was made in 1736. The still unidentified pair of views of Piazza S. Marco of 1731 and a View of Corfu with the Turkish Assault of 1716 already suggest a fairly well-rounded representation of Canaletto's work. Always regarded as particularly intriguing, however, is the documentation provided for two architectural capricci in the artist's 'prima maniera', a description repeated in the inventory of 1738, which Pittoni probably supervised, and in that of 1741, signed by authorities no less reliable than Piazzetta and Simonini (see under Literature above). The re-emergence of the present painting, whose pendant had clearly gone missing before the posthumous inventory of circa 1750, puts an end to speculation such as that of Dario Succi (loc. cit.), who proposed the identification of the Schulenburg pictures as the pair of early capricci in the Cini Collection in Venice.
The problem of Canaletto's earliest style has long divided English- speaking and Italian scholars, probably largely because most of the paintings of this period, executed for the local market before the demand for the artist's work became the almost exclusive preserve of foreigners, are in Italian private collections. As recently as 1989, J.G. Links questioned the authenticity of the date on Canaletto's earliest dated painting, the very large capriccio of 1723 in an Italian private collection (W.G. Constable, Canaletto, ed. J.G. Links, Oxford, 1989, I, p. xxiv, and II, p. 449, no. 479**), which, with its equally imposing pendant (ibid., no. 479***, in a Swiss private collection), is now known to have been painted for the villa of the Giovanelli brothers at Noventa Padovana. The artist was already twenty-six years old when he executed those, but attempts by Italian scholars to establish a not inconsiderable group of works as true juvenilia (A. Morassi, La giovinezza del Canaletto, Arte Veneta, XX, 1966, pp. 207-17, and R. Pallucchini, Per gli esordi del Canaletto, Arte Veneta, XXVII, 1973, pp. 155-88, the latter confused by a number of incorrect attributions) have been received with skepticism by English-speaking authorities (see Constable/Links, op. cit., nos. 382*, 385*, 478**, 478****, 500-1, 501*, 501*** and 501(a), (b), (c), and (l)). It is within this group of paintings datable circa 1720, at least five of them of similar size, that the present picture belongs. The basilica on the left with its curiously shaped faade is closely paralleled in one of the Cini capricci (ibid., no. 500), and even, to a lesser degree, in one of the much later Arundel Castle capricci (ibid., no. 507), while obvious reminiscences of Canaletto's recent visit to Rome in 1719 are included, as in many other paintings in the group (the Column of Marcus Aurelius recurs in ibid., no. 478**). The figures, reminiscent of Marco Ricci's and crude in comparison even with those in the capricci of 1723, and the khaki colouring are also characteristic. Most of these very early works were presumably executed as decorative fittings for Venetian palazzi. The rather unsubtle perspectival construction of this painting, however, reminds one particularly strongly that Canaletto's training was as a painter of theatrical scenery, and suggests that it may be one of the earliest components of the group. None of the other pictures has an early provenance and the significance of this work in providing evidence of the authenticity of the others was immediately recognised by J.G. Links when he saw it in 1996 (private communication to the present writer).
This painting is further discussed in an article which the present writer is preparing on Canaletto's early work.
C.B.
The inventory number which it still bears is that of the posthumous inventory of the collection of the present owner's ancestor, Field Marshal Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg (1661-1747), who was, with Consul Smith, the greatest foreign patron of painters and collector of paintings resident in Venice in the eighteenth century. A professional soldier of Saxon origin who had fought in most of the great European wars of his time, Schulenburg's defence of Corfu against the Turks in 1715 and 1716 had made him a hero to the Venetians, who erected a statue in his honour and granted him a life pension. He decided to retire to Venice and established himself at Palazzo Loredan on the Grand Canal near San Trovaso. There, in 1724, at the age of sixty-three, he found himself in possession of a group of eighty-eight paintings, mainly from the collections of the Dukes of Mantua, which were ceded to him by a dealer named Giovanni Battista Rota who had defaulted on a loan. This awakened in the Marshal a voracious appetite for collecting and in the remaining two decades of his life he amassed over nine hundred and fifty pictures. Schulenburg's purchases accelerated in the 1730s and in 1736 he began to send regular shipments of paintings back to his estates in Germany. A bachelor, he bequeathed the whole of his vast collection to his nephew with the request that it be preserved intact, but about 150 pictures, including many of the finest, were dispersed at Christie's as early as 1775 (12-13 April), and more have been sold in London auctions since 1982.
Schulenburg's collection is significant not only for the masterpieces by Piazzetta, Ceruti, Pittoni, Marieschi, Carlevarijs and others which it contained, but also for the extent of the documentation which survives in the Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv in Hannover. This makes the attributions (and often dating) of works by contemporaries as reliable as those for artists of the past are fanciful (the collection included pictures attributed to Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt). Until recently none of the six paintings by Canaletto described in some detail in the Schulenburg inventories had been identified and Professor Francis Haskell could state that 'with one of two important exceptions he owned nothing by Canaletto' and could list Canaletto among 'painters who were represented rather weakly' in the collection (F. Haskell, Patrons and Painters: Art and Society in Baroque Italy, New Haven and London, 1980, pp. 314 and 315). In fact, as Alice Binion has established (op. cit., 1990, p. 118), it included one of the artist's supreme masterpieces, The Riva degli Schiavoni, looking West from S. Biagio now in Sir John Soane's Museum, London, for which a payment was made in 1736. The still unidentified pair of views of Piazza S. Marco of 1731 and a View of Corfu with the Turkish Assault of 1716 already suggest a fairly well-rounded representation of Canaletto's work. Always regarded as particularly intriguing, however, is the documentation provided for two architectural capricci in the artist's 'prima maniera', a description repeated in the inventory of 1738, which Pittoni probably supervised, and in that of 1741, signed by authorities no less reliable than Piazzetta and Simonini (see under Literature above). The re-emergence of the present painting, whose pendant had clearly gone missing before the posthumous inventory of circa 1750, puts an end to speculation such as that of Dario Succi (loc. cit.), who proposed the identification of the Schulenburg pictures as the pair of early capricci in the Cini Collection in Venice.
The problem of Canaletto's earliest style has long divided English- speaking and Italian scholars, probably largely because most of the paintings of this period, executed for the local market before the demand for the artist's work became the almost exclusive preserve of foreigners, are in Italian private collections. As recently as 1989, J.G. Links questioned the authenticity of the date on Canaletto's earliest dated painting, the very large capriccio of 1723 in an Italian private collection (W.G. Constable, Canaletto, ed. J.G. Links, Oxford, 1989, I, p. xxiv, and II, p. 449, no. 479**), which, with its equally imposing pendant (ibid., no. 479***, in a Swiss private collection), is now known to have been painted for the villa of the Giovanelli brothers at Noventa Padovana. The artist was already twenty-six years old when he executed those, but attempts by Italian scholars to establish a not inconsiderable group of works as true juvenilia (A. Morassi, La giovinezza del Canaletto, Arte Veneta, XX, 1966, pp. 207-17, and R. Pallucchini, Per gli esordi del Canaletto, Arte Veneta, XXVII, 1973, pp. 155-88, the latter confused by a number of incorrect attributions) have been received with skepticism by English-speaking authorities (see Constable/Links, op. cit., nos. 382*, 385*, 478**, 478****, 500-1, 501*, 501*** and 501(a), (b), (c), and (l)). It is within this group of paintings datable circa 1720, at least five of them of similar size, that the present picture belongs. The basilica on the left with its curiously shaped faade is closely paralleled in one of the Cini capricci (ibid., no. 500), and even, to a lesser degree, in one of the much later Arundel Castle capricci (ibid., no. 507), while obvious reminiscences of Canaletto's recent visit to Rome in 1719 are included, as in many other paintings in the group (the Column of Marcus Aurelius recurs in ibid., no. 478**). The figures, reminiscent of Marco Ricci's and crude in comparison even with those in the capricci of 1723, and the khaki colouring are also characteristic. Most of these very early works were presumably executed as decorative fittings for Venetian palazzi. The rather unsubtle perspectival construction of this painting, however, reminds one particularly strongly that Canaletto's training was as a painter of theatrical scenery, and suggests that it may be one of the earliest components of the group. None of the other pictures has an early provenance and the significance of this work in providing evidence of the authenticity of the others was immediately recognised by J.G. Links when he saw it in 1996 (private communication to the present writer).
This painting is further discussed in an article which the present writer is preparing on Canaletto's early work.
C.B.