Exhibition History
- 1967
- Loan for display with permanent collection, Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, 1967-1971.
- 1973
- Extended loan for use by The Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D.C., 1973-1980.
Technical Summary
The support is a moderately coarse, plain-weave fabric. The ground is a moderately thick, dull red layer that shows through most areas of the paint surface. In the buildings the paint is applied tightly and thinly, while in the figures and highlighted architectural elements it is handled somewhat more loosely and with slight impasto. In general, the paint is applied in opaque layers with almost no glazing. The black lines that define architectural details were drawn with a straightedge. Ruled diagonal lines of underpaint in the foreground may have been used to establish the perspective. The tower was formerly about 1 cm wider on each side as can be seen in x-radiographs and from the vertical brushstrokes where the sky was painted over the sides of the tower.
The original tacking margins have been removed, but there is pronounced cusping along the left and right edges of the support. Abrasion is evenly distributed throughout the sky and darker areas of the foreground. Inpainting is restricted to the extreme edges. The varnish is clear. The painting was relined, discolored varnish was removed, and the painting was restored in 1981 by Carol Christensen.
Bibliography
- 1965
- Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 64, as School of Guardi.
- 1968
- National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 56, repro., as School of Guardi.
- 1972
- Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 97.
- 1975
- European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 168, repro., as School of Guardi.
- 1979
- Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:244; 2:pl. 165.
- 1985
- European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 194, repro.
- 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: 143-145, repro. 144.
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