Attributed to Francesco Guardi Venice 1712 - 1793

This painting is most likely a hitherto unknown view by Francesco Guardi, datable to the second half of the 1740s or shortly afterwards. The reddish-brown preparation ground and the fluidly - almost impressionistically - painted figures and architecture are characteristic of Guardi's early works, at a time when he was consciously imitating the style of Giovanni Antonio Canal, called il Canaletto. Indeed the handling may be compared to other known paintings by Guardi, where the artist takes exactly the same viewpoint and in which the disposition of figure groups within the picture space is very similar. The view is extremely close to Guardi's painting formerly in the collection of H.G. Sohl, Düsseldorf, and even more so to another painting, of slightly squarer format, in the Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna (A. Morassi, Guardi. I dipinti, Venice 1973, vol. I, pp. 381-2, cat. nos. 380 and 379, reproduced vol. II, figs. 403 and 402 respectively). Though the composition is broadly similar in all three versions, and the viewpoint taken from just behind the base of the Campanile is the same (with Jacopo Sansovino's Loggetta (c.1537-42) just visible centre right), the present variant is markedly looser in handling. There is a certain lack of detail, particularly in the foreground, and the line running diagonally across the Piazzetta, just beside the two dogs in both other versions, has been consciously omitted here by the artist.

The Vienna picture is closely related to an engraving by Canaletto in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, a second state of which is in the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, Museo Correr, Venice (reproduced in D. Succi, Canaletto & Visentini, Venezia & Londra, exhibition catalogue, Venice, Cà Pesaro, October 18, 1986 - January 6, 1987, p. 200, cat. no. 21). In that composition, as in the present variant, Guardi has retained certain anecdotal details such as the man leaning over the balustrade of Sansovino's Loggetta and the two playful dogs in the foreground; a detail so characteristic of Canaletto's views which would have been an instantly recognisable reference to the older artist's work. The Vienna picture was conceived as part of a set, from which three others exist (The Piazzetta towards the Library, The Piazza San Marco looking towards San Geminiano and The Molo with the Ponte della Paglia looking towards the Riva degli Schiavoni; Morassi, op. cit., vol. I, cat. nos. 384, 343, 413, reproduced vol. II, figs. 405, 370, and 433 respectively), all of which derive from Canaletto inventions (Succi, op. cit., pp. 198-9, cat. nos. 18, 20, and 19, all reproduced). The Canaletto engravings date from the early 1740s and Guardi's paintings, which have been dated to shortly after that (circa 1745-50), imitate Canaletto's style of the late 1720s in their fluid and painterly technique (for a discussion of this see Morassi, ibid., vol. I, p. 217). Given the differences between this and the other two known versions of the Piazzetta, it is likely that the present variant slightly post-dates the Vienna picture; a theory further borne out by the more confident handling of paint in the present version.