The Grand Canal, Venice

Francesco Guardi

Summary

A reproduction produced by the Vasari Society of a drawing by Francesco Guardi. The drawing shows a scene of the Grand Canal in Venice, with the canal running across the front of the composition, recessing slightly backwards towards the right edge, and with buildings in the background. There are eleven boats or gondolas on the water, and three more are tethered to the side of the canal against the right edge. All of these have a man in them, standing with a paddle, and most have one or two other people as well. The sky fills the top half of the composition, but no detail is drawn in here. Text from the accompanying booklet produced by the Vasari Society: "No. 29 FRANCESCO GUARDI (b. 1712; d. 1793) THE GRAND CANAL, VENICE British Museum, 1857-11-14-28. Pen and ink and pen and sepia with Indian ink and sepia wash. 52.6 x 34.1 cm. (20 5/8 x 12 3/8 in.) A drawing of the Grand Canal, evidently made on the spot, with lettering to indicate the colour as a guide when executing a painting. It has all the virtues and some of the defects of a rapid annotation of fact. Guardi's perspective is never accurate, but he rarely confused so completely two or three inconsistent points of view. At first sight it might appear that it was part of a larger panoramic drawing with the point of sight to the extreme right of the sheet, but this is negatived by the sharp perspective of the side of the central palace. Guardi would seem to have wished for pictorial purposes to have adopted an impossibly wide angle of vision, and to have made a practical compromise of three points of view. This fact, taken with the curvature of the canal, will explain the apparent inconsistency of illumination. But the charm and spontaneity of Guardi's touch and the brilliant shorthand of his indications are unaffected by such considerations. ROGER E. FRY."