Michele Marieschi

Anonymous sale ('The Property of a Private Collection'), London, Christie's, 2 December 2008, lot 44.

D. Succi, Marieschi, opera completa, Pordenone 2016, p. 280, cat. no. 98, reproduced in color pp. 282-83.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This work is in excellent overall. The canvas has an old glue lining which is providing an attractive surface. The painting is probably clean, although it would be beneficial to re-examine the retouches. There are very few restorations in the architecture; there are only a few in the roof of the palazzo on the left. There are no retouches in the canal, and the condition is also excellent in the boats in the lower left. In the sky, there are two restorations about half an inch square in the white cloud in the upper center and another circular restoration above the palazzo on the far left. There is some cracking and slight abrasion in the sails and rigging of the boat on the far left. The smoke from the chimneys and the fire in the roof in the center of the far side of the canal is thin but is not restored. The retouches are rather heavy handed and should be re-examined, but the picture is in beautiful condition nonetheless.
"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."

Unpublished prior to its sale in 2008, when its attribution was endorsed by Ralph Toledano and Dario Succi, this serene depiction of the Grand Canal by Michele Marieschi has since been included in Succi’s 2016 monograph on the artist (see Provenance and Literature). Succi dates the painting to 1738 and attributes the lively figures to the battle-painter Francesco Simonini, with whom Marieschi frequently collaborated. For this painting Marieschi revisited the same view as that formerly in the collection of Henry Howard, 4^th Earl of Carlisle, and now in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich (inv. no. L.1872).¹ The Munich canvas is accompanied by a pendant, also in the museum’s collection, depicting the Piazzetta di San Basso (inv. no. L1871). While dimensions of the Munich picture are very similar and the setting almost identical, the present painting differs in the grouping of figures on the shoreline and in the position of the boats and gondolas.

The paved shoreline at right is depicted from a viewpoint which, until recently, was presumed by scholars to have been the invention of the artist, since no such platform exists in this area of the Grand Canal today. Publishing the Munich picture in 1995, Ralph Toledano suggested the viewpoint was imagined, an opinion shared later by Mario Manzelli in 2002.² Succi, however, sheds light on the subject in his monograph entry for the present painting, referencing a list of paintings bound for Castle Howard, commissioned by the Earl via Anton Maria Zanetti in 1738-39. Zanetti’s lists notes the Munich painting as number 5, describing it precisely, “Veduta del Palazzo di Ca’ Pesaro, Chiesa di S: Stae, et altri Palazzi sopra il Canal Grande, et dall’altra parte Palazzo de Ca’ Guzzoni con il Campiello appresso,” “View of Palazzo Ca’ Pesaro, church of San Stae, and other buildings on the Grand Canal, and on the other side Palazzo Ca’ Guzzoni with the little square beside it.”³ Toledano and Manzelli were correct in so far as no such campiello or walkway exists today.  As Succi writes, however, what was then Palazzo Gussoni (now Palazzo Grimani della Vida) was at that time flanked by the Calle di Noale at right and by a very small square in front of the adjacent building at left. The campiello in question is in fact visible in a 1703 watercolour and subsequent print by Luca Carlevarijs, depicting the façade of Palazzo Gussoni. It is from precisely this point that Marieschi envisioned both this and the Munich compositions.

We are grateful to Charles Beddington for endorsing the attribution following first-hand inspection.

1. For the Munich paintings see D. Succi under Literature, p. 186, cat. nos. 23 and 24, reproduced.
2. R. Toledano, Michele Marieschi: catalogo ragionato, Milan 1995, p. 102; M. Manzelli, Michele Marieschi e il suo alter-ego Francesco Albotto, Venice 2002, p. 129, cat. no. A.41.01.
3. Succi under Literature, p. 186 and 280.