APOLLONIO DOMENICHINI, FORMERLY CALLED THE MASTER OF THE LANGMATT FOUNDATION VIEWS | A view of the river Brenta at Stra with the Villa Cappello and the Villa Pisani

Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 11 December 2003, lot 43;
There acquired. 

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 has been beautifully restored. The canvas is lined. The paint layer is still well textured. The work looks very fresh and rich to the naked eye. The condition is very good throughout the architecture and river. There is a vertical restoration 2 inches long in the river to the right of the central gondola, and other retouches along the bottom edge and around the figures in the gondola in the lower left. The sky shows fairly extensive retouching under ultraviolet light. These retouches address numerous small losses, cracks and spots where the original canvas showed through the paint layer. This kind of weakness in the sky is not unusual for Italian pictures from this period. The work looks well and should be hung as is.
"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."

Villa Pisani, visible in the distance of this view, was built between 1735 and 1740 based on designs by the Paduan Girolamo Frigimelica (for the gardens) and the architect Francesco Maria Preti (for much of the building itself). The rooms inside the villa were frescoed by a number of the leading painters of the day, including Jacopo Amigoni, Jacopo Guarana, Sebastiano Ricci, Giuseppe Zais and Giambattista Tiepolo (whose Glory of the Pisani Family, executed in 1761-62, is one of the artist's last works in Italy, before his departure for Madrid). The Master of the Langmatt Foundation Views, thus named after a series of seven views of Venice in the Langmatt Foundation in Zurich, has more recently been identified as Apollonio Domenichini (Venice 1715-c. 1770).  Domenichini, who was known amongst contemporaries as 'Menichino', was a follower of Luca Carlevarijs and Canaletto and, like them, he established his reputation by painting views of Venice and its environs. His name is recorded in the registers of the fraglia (corporation) of Venetian painters in 1757 and he frequently appears as the painter of works being sent by the Venetian dealer and connoisseur Giovanni Maria Sasso to the Englishman John Strange during the second half of the 18^th century.