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拍品专文
Born in the Tuscan village of Pitigliano, Francesco Zuccarelli had his early training in Florence, possibly with Paolo Anesi, and then in Rome with Giovanni Maria Morandi, Pietro Nelli and perhaps Andrea Locatelli. In the Eternal City he was able to absorb the great tradition of European landscape painting, from Claude through to the eighteenth century, and carry these lessons first back to Florence and then to Venice, where he settled in 1732. There he immediately succeeded as a painter of pastoral landscapes, enjoying the patronage of the most illustrious collectors of the time: Francesco Algarotti, Marshal Schulenburg and Consul Smith, the latter playing a key role in the development of the artist's career in Venice and abroad. Joseph Smith (circa 1686-1770) was not only the banker to the British community in Venice, but also a major patron of artists, a collector and a connoisseur, certainly the chief link between British Grand Tourists and the local artistic community. He disseminated the taste for vedute and for several years acted as a patron and, above all, as an agent for Canaletto. Smith and his English contemporaries were passionate about Palladian architecture, prompting him to reprint Palladio's Quattro libri dell'Architettura. Taking this passion even further, he commissioned Canaletto to paint a suite of thirteen overdoors depicting the principal Palladian buildings of Venice in 1744. Two years later, he ordered a similar series from Francesco Zuccarelli and Antonio Visentini. The eleven canvases they produced show the most notable neo-Palladian buildings in England, eight of these canvases have remained in the Royal Collection since George III's acquisition of Smith's collection in 1762.
Francesco Zuccarelli collaborated with some of the greatest eighteenth-century artists, including Bellotto and Tiepolo. His collaboration with Visentini, however, has been singled out as one of 'perfect harmony', but one in which Zuccarelli was allowed to work freely from imagination, while Visentini 'was faced with greater difficulties. He had to provide accurate versions of buildings which he had never seen and of which he had only plans and elevations' (A. Blunt, 'A neo-Palladian programme executed by Visentini and Zuccarelli for Consul Smith', The Burlington Magazine, C, 1958, p. 284). This comment conveys Visentini's skill. A knowledgeable and eccentric pupil of Pellegrini, he worked as a professor at the Venetian Academy, painter, engraver and architect, whom Consul Smith had also hired to redesign the façade on the newly acquired Palazzo Balbi in the Palladian style.
This picture represents Zuccarelli's work of the 1760s and 1770s, and was probably made for an English patron. It may be compared with a series of four canvases, of very similar size, first published by Antonio Morassi in 1960. Morassi saw them in London, a few years before they entered a Roman private collection (A. Morassi, 'Documenti, pitture e disegni inediti dello Zuccarelli', Emporium, CXXXI, 1960). That group depicts four masterpieces of sixteenth-century Venetic architecture in pastoral settings: Palladio's Villa Rotonda in Vicenza; Antonio da Ponte's Palazzo delle Prigioni in Venice; Palladio's Church of San Giorgio Maggiore; and finally Palladio's Church of the Redentore. If it were not for this last painting, the subject being too similar, one could conclude that the present picture was once part of the same series. Another splendid pair was formerly in the Modiano collection in Bologna, also with the Redentore and the Villa Rotonda, and a fourth painting with the Redentore is in another private collection (respectively illustrated in F. Spadotto, Francesco Zuccarelli, Milan, 2007, p. 244, figs 159-60, and p. 229, fig. 121).
This painting is the only known one by the two artists to recreate the project that Palladio submitted for the Ponte di Rialto in circa 1551, after the old timber bridge had collapsed once again. Palladio's classical idea was possibly considered inappropriate, and a stone bridge with a single span was completed in 1591 under the supervision of Antonio da Ponte. Other fascinating renditions of Palladio's project -- which was published in his Trattato di Architettura (fig. 1) -- are Canaletto's Capriccio with the Palladian design for the Rialto Bridge in The Royal Collection, the same artist's much celebrated Capriccio with the Palladian design for the Rialto Bridge and buildings at Vicenza (Parma, Galleria Nazionale) and Guardi's Capriccio of the Grand Canal in the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon, of which an autograph version was formerly in the Wallraf collection (illustrated in A. Morassi, I Guardi. Antonio e Francesco Guardi, Venice, I, fig. 534).
Francesco Zuccarelli collaborated with some of the greatest eighteenth-century artists, including Bellotto and Tiepolo. His collaboration with Visentini, however, has been singled out as one of 'perfect harmony', but one in which Zuccarelli was allowed to work freely from imagination, while Visentini 'was faced with greater difficulties. He had to provide accurate versions of buildings which he had never seen and of which he had only plans and elevations' (A. Blunt, 'A neo-Palladian programme executed by Visentini and Zuccarelli for Consul Smith', The Burlington Magazine, C, 1958, p. 284). This comment conveys Visentini's skill. A knowledgeable and eccentric pupil of Pellegrini, he worked as a professor at the Venetian Academy, painter, engraver and architect, whom Consul Smith had also hired to redesign the façade on the newly acquired Palazzo Balbi in the Palladian style.
This picture represents Zuccarelli's work of the 1760s and 1770s, and was probably made for an English patron. It may be compared with a series of four canvases, of very similar size, first published by Antonio Morassi in 1960. Morassi saw them in London, a few years before they entered a Roman private collection (A. Morassi, 'Documenti, pitture e disegni inediti dello Zuccarelli', Emporium, CXXXI, 1960). That group depicts four masterpieces of sixteenth-century Venetic architecture in pastoral settings: Palladio's Villa Rotonda in Vicenza; Antonio da Ponte's Palazzo delle Prigioni in Venice; Palladio's Church of San Giorgio Maggiore; and finally Palladio's Church of the Redentore. If it were not for this last painting, the subject being too similar, one could conclude that the present picture was once part of the same series. Another splendid pair was formerly in the Modiano collection in Bologna, also with the Redentore and the Villa Rotonda, and a fourth painting with the Redentore is in another private collection (respectively illustrated in F. Spadotto, Francesco Zuccarelli, Milan, 2007, p. 244, figs 159-60, and p. 229, fig. 121).
This painting is the only known one by the two artists to recreate the project that Palladio submitted for the Ponte di Rialto in circa 1551, after the old timber bridge had collapsed once again. Palladio's classical idea was possibly considered inappropriate, and a stone bridge with a single span was completed in 1591 under the supervision of Antonio da Ponte. Other fascinating renditions of Palladio's project -- which was published in his Trattato di Architettura (fig. 1) -- are Canaletto's Capriccio with the Palladian design for the Rialto Bridge in The Royal Collection, the same artist's much celebrated Capriccio with the Palladian design for the Rialto Bridge and buildings at Vicenza (Parma, Galleria Nazionale) and Guardi's Capriccio of the Grand Canal in the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon, of which an autograph version was formerly in the Wallraf collection (illustrated in A. Morassi, I Guardi. Antonio e Francesco Guardi, Venice, I, fig. 534).