In a few months’ time, in the famous Casa dei Carraresi, Treviso will host the extraordinary exhibition “Canaletto. Venice and its splendours” (Canaletto. Venezia e i suoi splendori).
After “Nineteenth century Venice. The triumph of colour” (Ottocento veneto. Il trionfo del colore) and “Twentieth century Venice” (Venezia 900), the city’s homage to Venetian art goes on with an event that will be open to the public from October 2008 to April 2009.
More than forty years after the memorable exhibition “Eighteenth century Venetian landscape painters” (I vedutisti veneziani del settecento), at the Doge’s Palace in Venice, this new exhibition will offer an extraordinary panorama dedicated to Venice landscape painting, the most spectacular artistic phenomenon of the eighteenth century. No subject had ever influenced a genre as landscape painting did, which seems to have been created to celebrate Venice just before its decline.
The extraordinary nature of the city, that rises from the waters, contradicting the very laws of physics, makes it no less than a marvel, an illusion made real, without the help of imagination.
Landscape painting is the product of observation, to which the camera obscura gives an accurate objectivity. Even nowadays we are still fascinated by the personal way the artists used to express themselves in an art form, only apparently dedicated to a faithful representation of spaces and buildings. Every painter presents original characters, and therefore changes in the framing, atmospheric conditions or simply in the manner of execution reflect their personal poetics.
Canaletto is the absolute protagonist of the exhibition. His attention to shades of light, associated with his natural ability to dilate space and to give water the uncontested leading role in the scene, makes him the landscape painter par excellence. With incomparable creative inspiration, throughout his career, he invented successful views of the city which would evoke Venice over the centuries to come: Rialto Bridge, Riva degli Schiavoni, various views of the Grand Canal, St. Mark’s Square and the quay, but also the market at Rialto and Campo San Giacometto.
As well as the maestro other landscape painters will also be included in the exhibition: Luca Carlevarijs, Michele Marieschi, Francesco Guardi and Bernardo Bellotto. The most important works by Canaletto depicting Venice will be on display. They have been brought together with the collaboration of some of the best known museums in the world, such as the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Prado in Madrid, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and many others. The major experts in landscape painting and in eighteenth century Venetian painting are on the exhibition committee, as well as the curators of the most important Italian and foreign galleries which are lending the paintings. It will be a unique opportunity to see a large number of masterpieces.
The city and province of Treviso is organizing a new series of events to welcome visitors, including exhibitions about the area and its typical features, offering the opportunity to discover the beauty of the historic Treviso region, besides the exhibition on this great Venetian painter.
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