His masterly and spirited painting of crowds enables him to reproduce
for us all those public ceremonies which Venice retained as long as the
Republic lasted: yearly pilgrimages of the Doge to Venetian churches, to
the Salute to commemorate the cessation of the plague, to San Zaccaria
on Easter Day, the solemn procession on Corpus Christi Day, receptions
of ambassadors, and, most gorgeous of all, the Feast of the Wedding of
the Adriatic. He has faithfully preserved the ancient ceremonial which
accompanied State festivities. In the "Fête du Jeudi Gras" (Louvre) he
illustrates the acrobatic feats which were performed before Doge
Mocenigo. A huge Temple of Victory is erected on the Piazzetta, and
gondoliers are seen climbing on each other's shoulders and dancing upon
ropes. His motley crowds show that the whole population, patricians as
well as people, took part in the feasts. He has also left many striking
interiors: among others, that of the Sala del Gran Consiglio, where
sometimes as many as a thousand persons were assembled, the "Reception
of the Doge and Senate by Pius IV." (which formed one of the series
ordered by Pietro Edwards), or the fine "Interior of a Theatre,"
exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts in 1911, belonging to a series
of which another is at Munich.
In his landscapes Guardi does not pay very faithful attention to nature.
The landscape painters of the eighteenth century, as Mr. Simonson points
out, were not animated by any very genuine impulse to study nature
minutely. It was the picturesque element which appealed to them, and
they were chiefly concerned to reproduce romantic features, grouped
according to fancy. Guardi composes half fantastic scenes, introducing
classic remains, triumphal arches, airy Palladian monuments. His
_capricci_ include compositions in which Roman ruins, overgrown with
foliage, occupy the foreground of a painting of Venetian palaces, but in
which the combination is carried out with so much sparkle and nervous
life and such charm of style, that it is attractive and piquant rather
than grotesque.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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