Antonietta Brandeis

This magnificent view of a sunlit Piazza San Marco in Venice is one of Antonietta Brandeis’ largest and most accomplished works. It is a true celebration of her luminous and colorful palette as well as her keen eye for detail, visible in the crisp rendering of the iconic setting and the lively array of individual figures that animate the scene. Of grand dimensions, this unlined canvas has survived in beautiful condition and offers an unobscured and captivating view that transports audiences to a summer’s day in Venice in the early 1880s.

This is almost certainly the painting titled “La piazza di S. Marco” that Brandeis exhibited at the 1884 Esposizione Generale Italiana in Turin. According to Paolo Serafini, a high price was placed on that painting (5,000 Lire), described as being of large dimensions painted with great diligence (grande formato e di forte impegno).[1] The size of this work and its important frame, typical of the period, suggests that this painting was always intended for public exhibition. 

Antonietta Brandeis was a Czech artist, who traveled to Venice from Prague with her widowed mother in 1860. In 1867, she enrolled in l'Accademia di Belle Arti, where she was a successful pupil and graduated at the top of her class as one of only two female students. While Brandeis devoted much of her oeuvre to smaller scale Venetian vedute , which were the perfect memento for tourists visiting Venice as part of the Grand Tour, it is in the examples such as the present that her trailblazing achievements are on full display. 

1. Serafini 2010, pp. 15, 25.