Michele Marieschi

Comtesse Benedetti;
Her sale, Paris, Hotel Drouot, 12-13 June 1912, lot 11 (as by Canaletto and wrongly described as a view of the Redentore on the Giudecca);
Acquired at the above sale by Mme. de Saint Alary;
With Steffanoni, Bergamo;
With Pietro Accorsi, Turin;
In the collection of the present owner in Paris, by c. 1971.

R. Toledano, Michele Marieschi. L'opera completa, Milan 1988, p. 113, no. V.34.2, reproduced;
R. Toledano, Michele Marieschi. catalogo Ragionato. Seconda edizione riveduta e corretta, Milan 1995, p. 120, no. V. 42, reproduced(with incorrect 1912 sale details; as location unknown);
F. Montecuccoli degli Erri & F. Pedrocco, Michele Marieschi. La vita, l'ambiente, l'opera, Milan 1999, p. 240, no. 20, reproduced (as location unknown).

"The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has a fairly old, firm lining, probably Italian, which has preserved the texture perfectly. The left edge has narrow retouching, broadening slightly with some filled old flaking near the skyline above the roofs, and rather wider retouching in the top left corner. The base edge has a fairly narrow band of retouching, with rather more in the right base corner. The lower right edge and the top edge have narrow bands of retouching. The only significant damage in the painting at all is a group of accidental losses by the top right corner. This consists of three apparent knocks, filled and retouched, with a few cracks stemming from them: a narrow vertical crack a little distance away from the corner running down almost to the horizon, with a rather sprawling patch of retouching, a centimetre or two wide, near the upper stretcher bar line, a second almost circular filling in the little cloud near the junction of the stretcher bar lines and one other similar retouched patch of filling in the other little cloud below. The present restoration is not particularly recent and there is slightly purplish tinge to these retouchings, which may cover slightly more original paint than necessary. There is some more of this lightly spread across the lower sky above the architecture on the right, apparently cosmetically and seemingly superfluous. The overall condition is exceptionally beautiful, with remarkably intact unworn brushwork. This report was not done under laboratory conditions."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

The view is taken from the right bank of the Grand Canal, from the front of the Palazzo Barbarigo, looking south-west towards the church of San Stae. While its interior is much older, the façade of San Stae, short for Sant'Eustachio, was designed in the Palladian style and begun in 1709 by Domenico Rossi and is one of the more theatrical church facades that line the Grand Canal. To its left is the Palazzo Foscarini-Giovanelli and to the immediate right the two-storey Palazzo Priuli-Bon, and then the larger Palazzo Contarini, destroyed by fire in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Of the three richly decorated and gilded gondolas that populate the canal, the two leftmost have been previously identified as belonging to the Giustiniani, one of the oldest and noblest families of Venice, on account of the double-headed eagle which sits on their respective rooves; Pedrocco and Montecuccoli, however, have suggested that these gondolas are in fact those of the imperial ambassador to Venice, and indeed what must be the very same gondolas appear in the foreground of Canaletto's Reception of the Imperial Ambassador, Count Giuseppe di Bolagno, at the Doge's Palace.¹  The ambassador, according to Molmenti,² landed at the Molo on 16^th May 1729 for his first audience at the Palace but it is not known how long he stayed. These three gondolas appear again in Marieschi's smaller canvas of the same view of San Stae, in a Parisian private collection,³ as well as in the view of the Bacino di San Marco, also in a private collection.⁴  Toledano considers all these three paintings mature works, datable to the end of Marieschi's life, on account of the vibrant impasto of the facades and the sensitive rendering of the shimmering water; Pedrocco and Montecuccoli date all three works more specifically to 1735 on the basis that the Giustiniani/ambassadorial gondolas are also seen in Marieschi's Rialto bridge with the arrival of Archbishop Francesco Antonio Correr (1676-1741), an event that took place on 7^th February of that year.⁵ Given their appearance at both this and the 1729 state event, and given that the Imperial ambassador was almost certainly not still in Venice in 1735, it seems most plausible that by this time the gondolas were simply used by the state for particular official occasions.

1. See W.G. Constable (rev. J.G. Links), Canaletto, vol. I, Oxford 1989, plate, 66, vol. II, p. 369, no. 355.
2.  P. Molmenti, Venice. The Decadence, 1908, no. 107 (note).
3.  See Toledano, 1995, pp. 118-19, no. V.41, reproduced.
4.  Ibid., p. 42, no. V.1.e, reproduced.
5.  Claydon House, Buckinghamshuire; Ibid., p. 75, no. V.14, reproduced. The document pertaining to the payment of this work made by Marshall Schulenburg on 2 April 1737, in association with its subject matter, allows one of the only insights into the chronology of Marieschi's paintings.