Italian Rococo Era Painter, 1712-ca.1793 The records of his parish in Venice show that Francesco Guardi was baptized on Oct. 5, 1712. His father, Domenico, who died when Francesco was 4, had a workshop. Francesco and his elder brother, Gian Antonio, worked in a small studio, carrying out such orders as they could get for almost anything the client wanted:mythological pictures, genre, flower pieces, battle scenes, altarpieces, and even, on rare occasions, frescoes. They did not hesitate to copy compositions by other artists, but what they borrowed they always transformed into something more capricious, less stable, more fragmentary in the refraction of light. Francesco did not emerge as an independent personality until 1760, when his brother died. Then, 48 years old, he married, established his own studio, and devoted himself chiefly to painting views of Venice. For the most part he worked in obscurity, ignored by his contemporaries. He was not even admitted to the Venetian Academy until he was 72 years old. Guardi and Canaletto have always been compared to one another because the buildings they chose to paint were often the same. But the way each artist painted them is very different. Canaletto's world is constructed out of line. It provides solid, carefully drawn, three-dimensional objects that exist within logically constructed three-dimensional space. Guardi's world is constructed out of color and light. The objects in it become weightless in the light's shimmer and dissolve in a welter of brushstrokes; the space, like the forms in space, is suggested rather than described. Canaletto belonged essentially to the Renaissance tradition that began with Giotto and, as it grew progressively tighter and more controlled, pointed the way to neoclassicism. Guardi belonged to the new baroque tradition that grew out of the late style of Titian and, as it became progressively looser and freer, pointed the way toward impressionism. Such differences appear even in Guardi's early view paintings, where he was obviously trying to copy Canaletto, such as the Basin of San Marco. The famous buildings are there, but they are far in the background, insubstantial, seeming to float. In front is a fleet of fishing boats, their curving spars seeming to dance across the surface of the canvas. What is important for Guardi is not perspective but the changing clouds and the way the light falls on the lagoon. Guardi became increasingly fascinated by the water that surrounds Venice. In late works, such as the famous Lagoon with Gondola, buildings and people have been stripped away until there is nothing but the suggestion of a thin line of distant wharfs, a few strokes to indicate one man on a gondola, a long unbroken stretch of still water, and a cloudless sky. Guardi also painted the festivals that so delighted visitors to the city, such as the Marriage of Venice to the Sea. This was a symbolic ceremony in which the doge, in the great gilded galley of the head of state, surrounded by a thousand gondolas, appeared before all Venice, in Goethe's image, "raised up like the Host in a monstrance." Of all Guardi's paintings the most evocative are his caprices, the landscapes born out of his imagination though suggested by the ruined buildings on the lonely islands of the Venetian lagoon. A gentle melancholy clings to such scenes.   Related Paintings of GUARDI, Francesco :. | Il Ridotto (The Foyer) dgh | The Doge on the Bucentaur at San Niccol del Lido | Fire in the Oil Depot at San Marcuola dg | The Piazzetta | The Grand Canal, Looking toward the Rialto Bridge sg |
Related Artists:
BIONDO, Giovanni del
Italian painter, Florentine school (active 1356-1392 in Florence)
lim-johan
Johan Erik Olsson, född 1865, död 1944, svensk konstnär, autodidakt och naivist, bosatt i Kyan, Hälsingland, där han försörjde sig som dagsverkare, laggkärlstillverkare och fotograf. Hans släkt kom från Lima i Dalarna, därav namnet. Som ung vistades han 8 år på Ulleråkers mentalsjukhus i Uppsala. Fram till 1920-talet målade han natur, djur och andra motiv från hemtrakterna i fantasifull, närmast exotisk gestalt. Lim-Johan uppmärksammades inte under sin levnad, men finns i dag representerad på bland annat på Edsbyns museum i Hälsingland och på Moderna Museet i Stockholm. 1944 avled Lim-Johan på Ovanåkers ålderdomshem efter en tids sjukdom. Han är begravd på Ovanåkers kyrkogård, där det sedan 1994 står "LIM-JOHAN" på gravstenen. Hans konst upptäcktes av en tillfällighet av fil.dr. Philibert Humbla, länsintendent på Gävle museum, som bad Hans Lidman att försöka finna så många tavlor av Lim-Johan som möjligt. Lim-Johan räknas i dag bland de förnämsta naivisterna i världen.
Fetti,Domenico
Italian painter , 1589-1623 was an Italian Baroque painter active mainly in Rome, Mantua and Venice. Born in Rome to a little-known painter, Pietro Fetti, Domenico is said to have apprenticed initially under Ludovico Cigoli, or his pupil Andrea Commodi in Rome from circa 1604-1613. He then worked in Mantua from 1613 to 1622, patronized by the Cardinal, later Duke Ferdinando I Gonzaga. In the Ducal Palace, he painted the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes. The series of representations of New Testament parables he carried out for his patron's studiolo gave rise to a popular specialty, and he and his studio often repeated his compositions. In August or September 1622, his feuds with some prominent Mantuans led him to move to Venice, which for the first few decades of the seventeenth century had persisted in sponsoring Mannerist styles (epitomized by Palma the Younger and the successors of Tintoretto and Veronese). Into this mix, in the 1620s-C30s, three "foreigners" Fetti and his younger contemporaries Bernardo Strozzi and Jan Lysebreathed the first influences of Roman Baroque style.