Lot Description
ANTONIO GUARDI (Vienna, 1699 – Venice, 1760) & FRANCESCO GUARDI (Venice, 1712 – 1793)
Lamentation over the Dead
Christ Oil on canvas, 32 x 41
cm Notes:
The painting is accompanied by an expert report by Dr Federica Spadotto.
We present in the auction catalogue an interesting oil on canvas of good quality, depicting the Deposition of Christ.
It was only following a careful investigation by the scholar Dr Federica Spadotto that this beautiful and intense canvas was attributed to the body of work by the Guardi family, created by Giovanni Antonio (Vienna, 1699 – Venice, 1760) and Francesco (Venice, 1712 – 1793), and is therefore an important addition to the catalogue of works by these masters.
Below is an extract from the scholar’s report:
“[...] Whilst the prolific output associated with the workshop of the ‘Guardi brothers’ remains a subject of investigation for art history to this day, archival research and eighteenth-century documents relating to Antonio (Vienna, 1699–Venice, 1760) and Francesco Guardi (Venice, 1712–1793) also make it possible to define the scope of a highly heterogeneous body of work. The ‘renaissance’ – if one may call it that – of two leading figures in eighteenth-century Venetian painting is, in fact, very recent, having been established for just over a century, in the wake of the success enjoyed by the Impressionists. The style of these artists appeared, in fact, to be well-suited to the taste for an immediate and instinctive form of painting, free from academic conventions, the result of an expressive urgency that anticipated nineteenth-century reflections.
It was not easy, however, to discern their individual personalities and define their respective roles within the family business, with the exception of landscape painting, of which Francesco was the sole and undisputed master. Like many Venetian workshops (Spadotto, 2018), the one run by the eldest brother following the death of their father Domenico (Mastellina, 1678– Venice, 1716) was not characterised by any specific pictorial genre (Montecuccoli degli Erri, 1992); this resulted in an impressive variety of subjects, ranging from copies of ancient paintings to religious and mythological themes, landscapes, genre scenes and portraits. It is within this context that the work under consideration is situated; it has the merit of ‘condensing’ the artistic developments in Guarda at the end of the fourth decade of the 18th century, a period marked by a fruitful collaboration between the two brothers, as documented by key pictorial evidence [...]”
