Word: canaletto
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...resolved to convey his ideas in pictures. He published a volume of twelve visionary buildings that dramatized his spaces by the diagonal perspectives of stage design. But his work created no stir, and he was forced to return to Venice, where the presiding geniuses at the time were Tiepolo, Canaletto and Guardi. The influence of Tiepolo freed Piranesi's line from cramped meticulousness favored by architectural engravers of the day. The result can be clearly seen in the Morgan show, where sketches for decorative panels and figure studies echo Tiepolo's and Guardi's free draftsmanship...
...these printmakers, one cannot say that they hesitated altering their first attempts but rather relished each stage of transformation--whether chrysalis or caterpillar--hoping that the eventual product would emerge in its aesthetically appropriate form. Of such able printmakers as Rembrandt, Canaletto, William Blake or Aubrey Beardsley, we cannot say that they shrunk from the beautiful as Oscar Wilde once declared of American artist James McNeil Whistler; "Ah, Whistler! Yes, wonderful of course, but, how he fears beauty! He puts a blot, a mere stain like a petal, a butterfly upon a sheet of paper and dares not touch...
...Italians, represented by Canaletto's scenes of Venice canals, piazzas, and rooftops and Pollaiuolo's Fighting Nudes, the sole drawing attributed to him, exemplify structure and texture as only these mediteranean architects are capable of constructing. Pollaiuolo's awareness of the human anatomy and Canaletto's vision of the Venetian canals and streets are mapped in these exhibited works...
...years 18th century Italian painting has been one of art history's orphans: the general supposition was that after 1650, Italian art slid into provincial decadence. From this sad landscape, littered with insignificant talents fit only for doctoral theses or bourgeois mantels, a few fine painters emerged: Tiepolo, Canaletto, Guardi, a handful of others. Giovanni-Battista Tiepolo, in fact, seems in retrospect to have been the last Italian artist formed in the heroic mold. A protean figure of bewildering facility and adaptability, he was the link between high historical painting and rococo elegance, able to invest a pen drawing...
...would have been more interesting to show Canaletto's view of Venice next to Guardi's Venice rather than placing a Tintoretto in between. And why is Vermeer's Young Woman between Claude Lorrain's turbulent Trojan Women and Poussin's Rape of the Sabine Women? For chronology or for a calm between two storms? Why not pair the Vermeer with Holbein's portrait of a German merchant? Pairing would at least make the viewer question why the two paintings were paired. Even pointing out both artists' attention to detail, would be better than just letting the viewer admire...