68 - ANTONIO GUARDI (Vienna, 1699 – Venice, 1760) & FRANCESCO GUARDI (Venice, 1712 – 1793)

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 catalog an interesting oil painting on canvas of good quality, depicting the Deposition of Christ. Only after a careful investigation by the scholar Dr. Federica Spadotto was this beautiful and intense canvas attributed to the body of work by the Guardi family, created by Giovanni Antonio (Vienna, 1699 – Venice, 1760) and Francesco (Venice, 1712–1793), and thus constitutes an important addition to the catalog of works by these masters. Below is an excerpt from the scholar’s descriptive entry: “[...] While the prolific output associated with the workshop of the ‘Guardi brothers’ remains a subject of investigation by art historians to this day, archival research and 18th-century documents pertaining 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 these two leading figures in 18th-century Venetian painting is, in fact, very recent, having been established just over a century ago, in the wake of the success achieved by the Impressionists. The style of these artists, in fact, seemed well-suited to the taste for an immediate and instinctive form of painting, free from academic conventions, the result of an expressive urgency that foreshadowed 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 after the death of their father Domenico (Mastellina, 1678– Venice, 1716) was not characterized by a specific pictorial genre (Montecuccoli degli Erri, 1992); resulting in an impressive variety of subjects, ranging from copies of ancient paintings to religious and mythological themes, landscapes, genre scenes, and portraits. The work under consideration belongs to this period and 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 sources [...]”