Giuseppe Bernardino Bison

Framed in wooden, gilded frame. Laid down on board, the paper is a little disrupted at the upper right corner, where attached to backing. Also a small loss to the pigment at the upper left corner. Another, very small loss of pigment at the centre of the upper edge. Otherwise the condition is very good indeed, the gouache fresh and strong.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

This view of Piazza San Marco is obviously closely inspired by the similar close-up views of the Piazza by Canaletto.¹  As Fabrizio Magani suggests in his publication on Bison, with this type of work the artist establishes a very commercial genre: the 'Veduta ricordo' for the collectors of the growing bourgeoisie.²  He seems to have executed a number of these small gouaches while in Trieste and, as pointed out by Magani in the entry on another very similar view of the Piazza,³ these views are rather accurate.  In fact they depict the view from the Basilica looking down to the new Ala Napoleonica, which was completed in 1813 after the demolition of the church of S. Geminiano which stood opposite the Basilica.  1813 can therefore be considered a terminus post quem for the present work.

1.  See for instance Canaletto, exhibition catalogue, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989, no. 48, reproduced

2.  Fabrizio Magani, Giuseppe Bernardino Bison, Soncino 1993, p. 100, under catalogue no. 25

3.  Idem, op. cit., no. 25, the illustration reversed