Francesco Tironi

By descent within the family of the present owners since the late 1920s.

For many years Francesco Tironi has remained a somewhat elusive figure. A clear understanding of his œuvre has been obscured by the stylistic similarities between his work and that of the great Venetian landscape painter Francesco Guardi. To his immediate contemporaries, Tironi was primarily known as a draftsman and so study of his work must begin with his drawings, after which a set of twenty-four prints were published at some point after 1779 by Antonio Sandi. One drawing, and its corresponding print, is of a similar vista to that in this painting, only seen from a view point slightly further South so as to represent the Church of Sant'Elena from the side.¹ In the present work Tironi has shifted his viewpoint very slightly and has painted Sant'Elena almost head on and, by expanding his composition to the right, has allowed us a sweeping vista of the north–west bank of the Lido and its Church of San Nicolò.

Throughout the foreground Tironi has carefully depicted a diverse variety of vessels that form the flotilla surrounding the Doge's Bucintoro. The occasion is that of the Sposalizio del Mare, an annual celebration that takes place on Ascension Day, during which the Doge would drop a consecrated ring into the lagoon, thus symbolically wedding the Venetian Repuplic to the sea and confirming the maritime prowess of La Serenissima. Tironi has here captured the solemnity of the ritual, but has imbued the scene with the life and bustle of the Venetian waterways. The subdued, almost monochrome palette and the wide, mirror-like water on which the boats sit, and the painterly and delicate rendering of the architecture of Sant'Elena are all hallmarks of Tironi's, as recognised by Herman Voss's essays of 1927–28 and 1966.²

Compositional and stylistic comparisons may be made between the present work and a signed work by Tironi in the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe.³ The two paintings share the low sweeping horizon, allowing at least two thirds of the canvas to be left for an expansive sky. They also share the same glassy water and mannered figures. It is also Voss who addresses the intricacies of Tironi's signature; the artist seems to have signed few of his paintings and drawings, but Voss recognised that sometimes when he did sign, he would bury his initials FT within motifs in the composition,⁴ for example a drawing of the island of Murano in the Albertina, Vienna, which Tironi signed by representing his monogram etched into the side of a wooden box that is being carried onto a boat.⁵ It is tempting to see these initials similarly camouflaged withing the motif of the winged Lion of Saint Mark on the flag flying from the mast of the large vessel in the right hand foreground.

Another version of the present composition, also by Francesco Tironi and with some differences in the boats and staffage, was sold Paris, Rieunier & Associés, 3 December 2012, lot 36.

1. The drawing is recorded as having been exhibited London, Colnaghi, Pictures from the Grand Tour, November–December 1978, as from the collection of Graf Samuel von Festetis, 1834. For the Sandi print see D. Succi, Francesco Tironi, Monfalcone 2004, p. 12, reproduced fig. 6.
2. See H. Voss, 'Francesco Tironi. Ein vergessener venezianischer Vedutenmaler', in Zeitschrift für Bildende Kunst, LXI, 1927–28, pp. 266–70, and H. Voss, 'Francesco Guardi und Francesco Tironi', in Pantheon, XXIV, 1966, pp. 266–70.
3. See C. Beddington, Venice, Canaletto and his Rivals, London 2011, p. 131, fig. 51.
4. H. Voss 1927–28, p. 267.
5. See V. Birke and J. Kertész, Die Italienischen Zeichnungen der Albertina, Vienna 1994, vol. II, p. 972, inv. no. 1853, reproduced.