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Francesco Guardi

Fanciful View of the Castel Sant'Angelo, Rome, c. 1785

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 46.8 x 76.3 cm (18 7/16 x 30 1/16 in.)

framed: 63.7 x 91.8 x 7 cm (25 1/16 x 36 1/8 x 2 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Howard Sturges

Accession Number

1956.9.2

Artists / Makers

Francesco Guardi (artist) Venetian, 1712 - 1793

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Provenance

(Alphonse Kann [1870-1948], Paris); sold 4 June 1914 to (Thomas Agnew & Sons, London, stock no. 4543); sold 27 June 1914 to Calouste Gulbenkian; returned 11 June 1915 to (Thomas Agnew & Sons, Ltd., London, stock no. 4668); sold 7 July 1922 to (C.M. Agnew and Ansdell, London);[1] sold to Howard Sturges [d. 1955], Providence, Rhode Island;[2] gift 1956 to NGA.

[1] Information provided by Martha Hepworth of the Getty Provenance Index from the stock records of Agnew's; the relationship of Agnew and Ansdell to the firm of Agnew's is unclear; they purchased paintings from Agnew's in the early 1920s (letter of 25 February 1992, NGA curatorial files).

[2] Notation of a letter from Geoffrey Agnew of 10 August 1956, on an artist card in NGA curatorial files, records that Sturges bought the painting from Agnew's, but gives no indication of when.

Associated Names

Agnew & Sons, Ltd., Thomas
Agnew and Ansdell, C.M.
Gulbenkian, Calouste Sarkis
Kann, Alphonse
Sturges, Howard

Exhibition History

1967: Loan for display with permanent collection, Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences (now Chrysler Museum), Virginia, 1967-1972.

1974: Loan for display with permanent collection, Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida, 1974.

1977: Extended loan for use by Secretary Patricia R. Harris, U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Washington, D.C., 1977-1980.

Technical Summary

The plain-weave fabric was prepared with an underlying dark red layer and a second, buff-colored ground. This buff color was allowed to show through in the architecture, sky, and water. The artist began by painting the cityscape: he sketched it in first with painterly contour lines, then added blocks of color, and finally used thin lines of black and white for the details. Figures were painted over the landscape and architectural elements. The blue sky was laid in after the cityscape, but directly over the ground, and the clouds were added over the sky. The whites and lighter colors were applied quite thickly, the darks thinly. In x-radiographs it appears that the house in the center was moved downward and that the dome of the church on the left had been planned to be much taller.

The original tacking margins have been removed, but cusping suggests that the original image dimensions have been preserved. The surface is severely abraded, especially in the darks, which have also become quite transparent. This is especially evident in the glazes used for Saint Peter's. Inpainting in the sky is concentrated near the cityscape. The varnish is somewhat matte. The painting was relined, discolored varnish was removed, and the painting was restored in 1956, probably by Frank Sullivan.

Bibliography

1958: Muraro, Michelangelo. "An Altar-Piece and Other Figure Paintings by Francesco Guardi." The Burlington Magazine 100 (1958): 8, fig. 17.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 64.

1967: Muraro, Michelangelo. "Asterischi guardeschi." In Problemi Guardesci. Atti del Convegno di studi promossi della mostra dei Guardi. 13-14 settembre 1965. Venice, 1967: 161, fig. 175.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 56, repro.

1972: Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 97.

1972: Krönig, Wolfgang. "Storia di una veduta di Roma." Stordia dell'Arte 57 (1972): 182, fig. 37.

1973: Morassi, Antonio. Guardi: Antonio e Francesco Guardi. 2 vols. Venice, 1973-1975: 1:137, 257-258, 438, no. 685; 2:644.

1974: Rossi Bortolatto, Luigina. L'opera completa di Francesco Guardi. Milan, 1974: 84, 131, no. 708, repro.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 166, repro.

1979: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:243; 2:pl. 164.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 194, repro.

1993: Succi, Dario. Francesco Guardi. Milan, 1993: 115, fig. 115.

1996: De Grazia, Diane, and Eric Garberson, with Edgar Peters Bowron, Peter M. Lukehart, and Mitchell Merling. Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 138-141, repro. 139.