venetian art, 1600–1797 849
settled again for good in his home country some nine years later. Canal-
etto’s genre had been exported by his nephew, Bernardo Bellotto, to Ger-
many and Poland, where he had enjoyed his greatest successes.97 He gave
to his uncle’s style and visual formula his own twist with his cool, more
“northern” light.
Visitors were at times disappointed by their first impression of Venice,
conditioned as they were by the works of Canaletto. Where the withering
of a Gothic palace adds to the pictorial effect of a painting, in reality it may
be perceived as just what it is. it was exactly this suggestive, melancholic
atmosphere of decay that Francesco Guardi evoked with his portrayals of
the city and its lagoon. He worked at first in the manner of Canaletto in
terms of topographical correctness. His later views became the expression
of quite a different sensibility. the patina of the past conveyed by old and
crumbling buildings or overgrown ruins obtained a charm. and if depict-
ing a humid summer day when solid shapes and outlines, so typical of
Canaletto’s style, seem on the point of dissolution, an even stronger feel
for Venice’s unique picturesque characteristics elicited by the omnipres-
ent water can be had. the hues of pastel colored greyish-green tones and
sketchy, evanescent patches of paint mark his style in these works.98
not before c. 1750, when Francesco Guardi was already 38 years old, did
he emerge as a distinct personality, independent from the workshop of
his elder brother Giannantonio.99 He ventured into quite different subject
matters than his brother had produced. He experimented, so it seems,
with genre interiors, but set, as we will see, in the newly popular idiom of
Pietro Longhi, who already enjoyed enormous success in this category of
subject matter.100 Like Canaletto, Guardi also painted so-called capricci,
views in which the factual was suggestively fused with the fanciful (Fig.
22.12).101 these again were often elaborations of works created by Marco
97 Stefan Kozakiewicz, Bernardo Bellotto genannt Canaletto, 2 vols (recklinghausen,
1972); exh. cat. (Conegliano 2010–11), Bernardo Bellotto: Il Canaletto delle corti europee, ed.
Dario Succi (Venice, 2012).
98 antonio Morassi, Guardi. Antonio e Francesco Guardi (Venice, 1973); Dario Succi,
Francesco Guardi. Itinerario dell’avventura artistica (Cinisello Balsamo, 1993); and alessan-
dro Bettagno, ed., I Guardi. Vedute, capricci, disegni e quadri turcheschi (Venice, 2002).
99 Filippo Pedrocco, Antonio Guardi (Milan, 1992).
100 Filippo Pedrocco, “Francesco Guardi e Pietro Longhi,” in I Guardi (Venice, 2002),
pp. 125–31.
101 exh. cat. (Gorizia, 1988), Capricci veneziani del Settecento, ed. Dario Succi (turin,
1988).