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Artist
Luca Carlevariis
Title
The Piazzetta at Venice
Date
ca. 1700-10
Culture
Italian
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
96.5 X 195.3 cm (38 x 76-7/8 in.)
Accession Number
1979:004
Credit Line
Luca Carlevariis, The Piazzetta at Venice, oil on canvas, 96.5 X 195.3 cm (38 x 76-7/8 in.), Putnam Foundation, Timken Museum of Art.
Full view of The Piazzetta at Venice
Description
Luca Carlevariis was the first painter of Italian origin to specialize in views of Venice. The artist's many precise renditions of the city reveal his early training as a mathematician. His painting of the Piazzetta places the viewer in a boat on the Grand Canal, looking north toward the Piazza of San Marco. The direction of the shadows from the southwest-indicates that the time is afternoon. On the left arethe library of Sansovino, the lower portion of its Campanile, and the column of Saint Theodoric. To the right are the south side of Saint Mark's Basilica, the Doge's Palace, and the column of Saint Mark. The buildings, though not entirely accurate in certain architectural details, remain largey unchanged to this day.

Related Information / Media

Provenance

Arturo Grassi, New York, 1948; Sabatello, Rome; Bruschi, Florence; Paul Drey, New York; Acquired by the Putnam Foundation, 1979

Exhibited

Louisville,Ky.,J.B. Speed Art Museum,1948, A Gallery of Eighteenth Century Venetian Paintings, no. 4; The Detroit Institute of Arts, and Indianapolis, John Herron Art Museum, 1952, Venice, 1700-1800, no. 18. The painting is wrongly identified in the catalogue as one of four
paintings commissioned from Carlevariis by the English traveler Christopher Crowe. These pictures were in fact still in
the possession of Crowe's descendants at the time of the Detroit exhibition, but the mistake persisted (e.g., in Rizzi's book); Udine, Loggia del Lionello, and Rome, Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe, 1963 -64, Disegni, incisionie bozzetti del Cnrlevariis, cat. by Aldo Rizzi, pl. XXXII.

Literature

Fabio Mauroner, Luca Carlevariis (Padua, 1945), p.58; Antonio Morassi, "Una mostra de settecento veneziano a Detroit," Arte Veneta 7 (1953): 56; Carlo Donzelli, I pittori veneti del settecento (Florence. , 1957), p. 54; Aldo Rizzi, Luca Carlevariis (Venice, 1967), p. 92, pl. 139; Rodolfo Pallucchini, "Miscellanea piazzettesca," Arte Veneta 22 (1968): 106 -Jo; Timken Art Gallery: European and American Works of Art in the Putnam Foundation Collection (San Diego, 1983), pp. 24-25, 116, no. 5, ill.

Note

This record has been reviewed by Timken Museum of Art staff and may be incomplete or contain errors. Our records are constantly revised. Inquiries about provenance are advised to contact the Director of Curatorial Affairs: curator@timkenmuseum.org.