850 massimo favilla, ruggero rugolo, and dulcia meijers
ricci.102 With Canaletto in england and no other rivals in his immediate
vicinity,103 he may well have found his real vocation in painting topo-
graphically exact vedute, for which he rapidly created his own niche,
developing that typical painterly style of his in the employment of a loose
brush technique.104 He exemplified with great effect views of Venice and
its islands without recourse to sophisticated perspectival systems.105
a whole different kind of souvenir which the well-educated grand tour-
ist or english collector liked to possess were italianate pastoral landscapes
that kindled general memories of a trip across the Mediterranean world.
the tuscan Francesco Zuccarelli met with instant success in Venice with
the advancement of bucolic scenes of an idyllic arcadian nature inserted
into imaginary landscapes.106 in this he followed the French trend of
Boucher. in general, however, in the 1600s and 1700s, the city of the lagoon
did not particularly stand out in landscape.
A New Spirit
taste for large and exciting works that amaze or a penchant for little inti-
mate and sentimental pictures can be considered the polar points of the
artistic sensibility that ran through the 18th century. While the cultural
climate was changing, different genres and iconographies had gained
more ground at the expense of the traditional popularity of historical and
allegorical painting. the world of ricci, Piazzetta, and tiepolo that was
continued in the works of their many pupils grew slowly out of date. it
should be explicitly noted, however, that it fizzled out well before the fall
of the republic in 1797. the later age inclined towards standards of real-
istic nature and of truth: qualities of imagination so characteristic of the
grand manner were no longer the well-respected norm. nor was the need
for ancestral and self-glorification, for display and for representation, felt
as an absolute requirement in the fashioning of their self-image; rather,
patrician families in the second half of the 18th century started to stress
virtues of a completely different nature. this can be seen in the works of
102 exh. cat. (Belluno, 1993), Marco Ricci e il paesaggio veneto del Settecento, ed. Dario
Succi and annalia Delneri (Milan, 1993).
103 Michele Marieschi had already died in 1743.
104 Denis Mahon, “When did Francesco Guardi become a ‘vedutista’?” The Burlington
Magazine 110 (1968), 69–73, had raised as the first the question when Guardi had started
specializing in vedute.
105 exh. cat. (Venice, 2012), Francesco Guardi 1712–1793, ed. Filippo Pedrocco and alberto
Craievich (Milan, 2012).
106 Federica Spadotto, Francesco Zuccarelli (Milan, 2007).