CANALETTO IN VENICE
September 19, 2012 -February 10, 2013
Under the patronage of the city of Venice, the Musée Maillol dedicates for the first time an exhibition exclusively to the Venetian work of Canaletto.
We had the opportunity to discover this exhibition during a private tour of this magnificent venue, and we were spellbound.
Canaletto in Venice” brings together over fifty carefully selected paintings from the most important museums and private collections. Some masterpieces from private collections have not been shown to the public since the 1930s. Many of the works in the exhibition are coming to France for the first time. A collaboration agreement has been signed with the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, which is preparing a retrospective of Guardi’s work at the same time as the Museo Correr in Venice, in commemoration of the three-hundredth anniversary of his birth.
Along the itinerary of these Venetian sites, each painting, with its recomposed topography, gives that sensation of reality that opens up our imagination.
Venice owes its artistic fame as much to the great masters of the 15th century as to the painters who in the 18th century magnified its urbanity. The city became his image, and Canaletto looked at it as a composer. He transcribed the city’s imagination in each view, which he produced like a dream topography, nourished at every moment by those details that give a sense of truth, nestled in monuments, islands, squares and canals.
In the section devoted to drawings, Canaletto’s famous Notebook (circa 1731), one of the city’s treasures, is on display at the Gabinetto dei Disegni e Stampe delle Gallerie dell’Accademia, which will exceptionally be leaving Venice for the duration of the exhibition. Visitors will be able to admire it open, as well as leaf through it virtually. This notebook is a fundamental
tool for understanding Canaletto’s working technique.
Canaletto (1697-1768) is the most famous Venetian vedutisti of the 18th century. Over the centuries, Antonio Canal never suffered a reversal of fortune. His works have always been eagerly sought after by collectors. Canaletto’s vedute, or city views, are recomposed fragments. Each place depicted, in the precise description of its identity, evokes
the entire city. The reality of Venice is now grasped through painted or engraved images, maintained for those who dream of discovering it or, knowing it, want to keep its memory alive.
In collaboration with Venice’s Soprintendenza al Polo Museale, the Musée Maillol, thanks to studies by Dario Maran and the skills of Venetian master craftsmen, has reconstructed a facsimile of the optical chamber used by Canaletto to produce his drawings. Derived from Caravaggio’s instrument, with a set of carefully oriented magnifying glasses, the device, often placed on a boat,
with the lens facing the chosen subject, offered a field of vision and precision of transcription unique at the time. Visitors to the exhibition will be able to appreciate the efficacité of this device for themselves.
In recent years, Canaletto has been at the center of a series of remarkable vedutisti exhibitions. We’ll just mention a few, such as the one in Rome organized by the great and much-lamented Alessandro Bettagno, with Bozena Anna Kowalczyk, the one in Treviso by Giuseppe Pavanello and Alberto Craievich and, more recently, the exceptional ones in London and
Washington by Charles Beddington.
The exhibition at the Musée Maillol aims to bring this ten-year cycle to a close, leaving Canaletto to accompany the viewer alone as he fills his vedute through the detours of his city. The exhibition will highlight the artist’s stylistic evolution. The confrontation of works representing the same subject will show how the painter’s first style, marked by Marco Ricci’s touch and deeply linked to his activity as a scenographer, was gradually transformed into an interpretation of reality with an atmosphere both subtle and sublime, giving birth to an art that was to conquer Europe.
This exhibition is a marvellous voyage into a Venice sublimated by the staging of this major artist. The scenography also highlights the story told by the paintings. One of this fall’s major exhibitions.
MUSÉE MAILLOL
59-61 rue de Grenelle
75007 Paris
Cette publication est également disponible en : Français (French)
