Italian Rococo Era Painter, 1712-ca.1793 The records of his parish in Venice show that Francesco Guardi was baptized on Oct. 5, 1712. His father, Domenico, who died when Francesco was 4, had a workshop. Francesco and his elder brother, Gian Antonio, worked in a small studio, carrying out such orders as they could get for almost anything the client wanted:mythological pictures, genre, flower pieces, battle scenes, altarpieces, and even, on rare occasions, frescoes. They did not hesitate to copy compositions by other artists, but what they borrowed they always transformed into something more capricious, less stable, more fragmentary in the refraction of light. Francesco did not emerge as an independent personality until 1760, when his brother died. Then, 48 years old, he married, established his own studio, and devoted himself chiefly to painting views of Venice. For the most part he worked in obscurity, ignored by his contemporaries. He was not even admitted to the Venetian Academy until he was 72 years old. Guardi and Canaletto have always been compared to one another because the buildings they chose to paint were often the same. But the way each artist painted them is very different. Canaletto's world is constructed out of line. It provides solid, carefully drawn, three-dimensional objects that exist within logically constructed three-dimensional space. Guardi's world is constructed out of color and light. The objects in it become weightless in the light's shimmer and dissolve in a welter of brushstrokes; the space, like the forms in space, is suggested rather than described. Canaletto belonged essentially to the Renaissance tradition that began with Giotto and, as it grew progressively tighter and more controlled, pointed the way to neoclassicism. Guardi belonged to the new baroque tradition that grew out of the late style of Titian and, as it became progressively looser and freer, pointed the way toward impressionism. Such differences appear even in Guardi's early view paintings, where he was obviously trying to copy Canaletto, such as the Basin of San Marco. The famous buildings are there, but they are far in the background, insubstantial, seeming to float. In front is a fleet of fishing boats, their curving spars seeming to dance across the surface of the canvas. What is important for Guardi is not perspective but the changing clouds and the way the light falls on the lagoon. Guardi became increasingly fascinated by the water that surrounds Venice. In late works, such as the famous Lagoon with Gondola, buildings and people have been stripped away until there is nothing but the suggestion of a thin line of distant wharfs, a few strokes to indicate one man on a gondola, a long unbroken stretch of still water, and a cloudless sky. Guardi also painted the festivals that so delighted visitors to the city, such as the Marriage of Venice to the Sea. This was a symbolic ceremony in which the doge, in the great gilded galley of the head of state, surrounded by a thousand gondolas, appeared before all Venice, in Goethe's image, "raised up like the Host in a monstrance." Of all Guardi's paintings the most evocative are his caprices, the landscapes born out of his imagination though suggested by the ruined buildings on the lonely islands of the Venetian lagoon. A gentle melancholy clings to such scenes.   Related Paintings of GUARDI, Francesco :. | Piazza di San Marco (detail) dh | Rio dei Mendicanti | Doge Alvise IV Mocenigo Appears to the People in St Mark s Basilica in 1763 | The Lagoon with Boats, Gondolas, and Rafts kug | Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo fh |
Related Artists:
Willem Bodeman
painted Italianate landscape in 1847
Lorens Pasch the Younger
(1733-1805) was a Swedish painter He grew up in an artistic family (he was the brother of Ulrika Pasch, alongside whom he was elected to the Art Academy in 1773), but his father Lorens Pasch the Elder wanted him to become a priest. He was thus sent to study in Uppsala aged 10. However, he decided on an artistic career after all and began an apprenticeship in his father's studio before going to Copenhagen, with introductions from his wealthy and influential uncle Johan Pasch. There he studied painting for three years in the studio of Carl Gustaf Pilo. Despite good offers of studio-apprenticeships and commissions from Sweden, he then set off for Paris in 1758 to complete his artistic education. There he specialised in history painting in the studios of Eustache Le Sueur and François Boucher (though for financial reasons he also continued his training in portraiture) and became friends with fellow-Swede Alexander Roslin. In 1764 he left Paris and got back to Sweden in 1766. He fully completed his training in the studio of the French painter Guillaume Taraval, who in 1735 founded the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm. Soon after his arrival back in Sweden Pasch's gained a great reputation as a portraitist, gaining favour and commissions from the royal court and gaining the esteem of Adolf Frederick, King of Sweden and his queen Louisa Ulrika - one of his most notable works is his Portrait of Louisa Ulrika of Prussia. He served as a professor at the Academy of Arts from 1773 to his death, becoming its director on Pilo's death in 1793. At the end of his life he concentrated more on training young artists and managing the Academy than on painting. He died unmarried in 1805 and due to his powerful portraits remains one of the most respected painters of the Gustavian era in Sweden.
Joaquin Mir Trinxet
Spanish , 1873-1940