Attributed to Luca Carlevarijs Udine 1663 - 1730 Venice

Thought to have hung in a château outside Paris which was destroyed during the French Revolution;
Thence by descent to the previous owner;
From whom purchased by the actual owner circa 1984.

This painting has traditionally been attributed to Luca Carlevarijs, however, Dario Succi has suggested that the work may be by a Northern artist working in Florence in the late seventeenth century.

Luca Carlevarijs is today considered the founder of the Venetian school of view painting, without whom the vedute of Canaletto, Bellotto or Guardi would have been inconceivable, and yet Carlevarijs was not just a view painter: he is a far more versatile artist than he is perhaps given credit for today. He was born in Udine, the son of a painter, sculptor and architect, but after being orphaned when he was a young boy he moved to Venice with his sister in 1679 when Carlevarijs was sixteen years old. Scholars have presumed a visit to Rome in his youth but this is undocumented and it is far more likely that he remained in Venice and its whereabouts. His early works do show some knowledge of the Bamboccianti but he was also familiar with the art of Pieter Mulier and Johann Anton Eismann, both of whom were in Venice during the last quarter of the 17th century. It was in line with these Northern artists that Carlevarijs began his career by painting capricci of Mediterranean harbors such as this one, only later turning his hand to painting topographical views of Venice for the Grand Tourists. Carlevarijs was not just a painter, for he was consulted as an architect in 1712 and was portrayed as a mathematician in Bartolomeo Nazzari’s portrait in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and in the 1724 engraving by Giovanni Antonio Faldoni after it.¹ In May 1703 he produced a book with a series of 104 engravings of buildings and views of Venice entitled Le Fabriche, e Vedute di Venetia disegnate, poste in prospettiva et intagliate, thus amply demonstrating his abilities as a vedutista by this early date.

This painting is remarkable both for its astonishing dimensions and for its complex design. Although Carlevarijs was evidently used to painting on a large scale, this would be the largest surviving example in Carlevarijs’ œuvre. That Carlevarijs was not particularly prolific may be in part explained by the fact that a great deal of care was needed to produce such vast compositions, whose conception and execution would have been extremely time-consuming. The painting may be compared to two equally impressive Capricci of Mediterranean ports, each measuring approximately 131.5 by 290 cm., formerly in the collection of the brothers Giovanni Benedetto and Giovanni Paolo Benedetti, in whose villa at Noventa Padovana they are first recorded in 1735.² Although the early history of the present painting is unknown it too was most probably painted for a local patron. The Benedetti pair have been dated by Dario Succi to circa 1705, in the middle of Carlevarijs’ decade of greatest creativity, and another pair of capricci which are signed and dated 1703 are extremely close to them in style,³ but the present painting would appear to pre-date all of these by some years. The figures still show the influence of Dutch 17th-century painters such as Pieter van Laer (whose work Carlevarijs may have known from engravings), whilst the landscape is inspired by Salvator Rosa and by the French classicists Gaspard Dughet for the countryside and Claude Lorrain for the depiction of water and the light reflecting from the setting sun. The painting’s style can be compared to that in the pair of Naval battles formerly in a Swiss private collection and more closely still to Carlevarijs’ large Mediterranean port (184 by 340 cm.); one of three paintings executed for Conte Pietro Zenobio and today at Ca’ Zenobio in Venice.⁴ Both of these are dated by Rizzi to circa 1690, and a date in the 1690s for the present work seems highly plausible.

Carlevarijs’ composition is extremely complex and his panoramic view of the port leads the eye as far as the vanishing point on the horizon. The harbor is peopled with naturalistic figures, their poses and actions thoroughly convincing thanks to the countless drawings of people Carlevarijs produced and kept within the studio for use in his paintings.⁵ The use of a ‘pattern book’ is unusual in the 18th century but by no means unique: the tradition had existed in Venice since the 15th century and the use of sketches in the studio, for pupils to copy from and for insertion into paintings, was clearly part of Carlevarijs’ working practice. As well as numerous studies of merchants, gentlemen, masked ladies, gondoliers, food-sellers and animals, he produced detailed pen-and-wash drawings of shipping vessels, from gondolas and small fishing-boats to galleys and frigates, also for use within his painted compositions.⁶ The figures gathered around a statue on the quay lower left and the moored boat being careened just right of centre both recur in a signed painting of a Mediterranean port by Carlevarijs, sold in Monaco in 1992.⁷

1  The engraving is inscribed: Lucas Carlevaris Pictor Venetus et Mathematica cultor egregius; see D. Succi, in I. Reale and D. Succi, Luca Carlevarijs e la veduta veneziana del Settecento, exhibition catalogue, Padua, Palazzo della Ragione, September 25 – December 26, 1994, p. 301, cat. no. 108, reproduced.
2  Sold, New York, Christie’s, April 6, 2006, lots 88 and 89; reproduced in color in C. Beddington, Luca Carlevarijs: Views of Venice, exhibition catalogue, San Diego, Timken Museum of Art, April 27 - August 31, 2001, p. 11, fig. 7 and p. 12, fig. 8.
3  Oil on canvas, 85 by 135 cm. each; Credito Artigiano, Milan; see I. Reale, in Reale and Succi, op. cit., p. 224, cat. nos. 54 and 55, reproduced in color pp. 226-27.
4  A. Rizzi, Luca Carlevarijs, Venice 1967, p. 95, reproduced figs. 17-20 and 11-12 respectively. The Naval battles were most recently offered in London, Christie’s, December 3, 1997, lot 92. The Ca’ Zenobio Mediterranean port is reproduced in colour in Reale and Succi, ibid., p. 177.
5  Rizzi, op. cit., reproduced figs. 26-29 and 41-176.
6  Many of these are today in the Museo Correr, Venice; see ibid., reproduced figs. 1-25.
7  Oil on canvas, 93 by 125 cm.; sold, Monaco, Christie’s, June 20, 1992, lot 19. Careening is when boats are tilted on their side in order for their hull to be cleaned, caulked or repaired.