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 :. | The Coronation of the Doge dfg | The Piazza San Marco towards the Basilica dfh | The Doge on the Bucintoro near the Riva di Sant-Elena | Outward Voyage of the Bucintoro to San Nicol del Lido dfg | View of Piazzetta San Marco towards the San Giorgio Maggiore sdg |
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Levitsky, Dmitry
Russian Painter, 1735-1822 .Russian painter of Ukrainian birth. Together with Fyodor Rokotov and Vladimir Borovikovsky, he ranks foremost among 18th-century Russian portrait painters. He received his first lessons in painting from his father, Grigory Levitsky-Nos (1697-1769), a priest, engraver and painter. He also studied under Aleksey Antropov, who had come to Kiev to decorate St Andrew's church (1752-5). In the late 1750s Levitsky went with Antropov to St Petersburg, where he stayed until 1764; he continued with lessons from Antropov to whom, it appears, he owed the objectivity that was to characterize his work. It is probable that he also studied at the St Petersburg Academy of Arts, attending classes under Louis Lagren?e. Levitsky worked with Antropov on the decoration of triumphal arches in Moscow for Catherine II's coronation in 1762. His first known portraits are rather formal, for example that of the architect Aleksandr Kokorinov (1769; St Petersburg, Rus. Mus.), which won Levitsky the title of Academician in 1770. In such works he made successful use of a compositional structure typical of formal European portrait painting, intended to emphasize the importance of the sitter.
Moran, Edward
English-born American, 1829-1901 American painter of marine and historical subjects, b. England. He came to the United States with his family in 1844. In 1899 he completed a series of 13 paintings illustrating epochs in the maritime history of America from the landing of Leif Ericsson to the return of Admiral Dewey's fleet from the Philippines in 1899 (Pennsylvania Mus. of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia). His brother Thomas Moran, 1837?C1926, was an American landscape painter, illustrator, and etcher. He accompanied the exploring expeditions of Professor F. V. Hayden to the Yellowstone River (1871) and of Major J. W. Powell down the Colorado River (1873). Subsequently, he made the illustrations on wood for both expeditions' reports and the sketches from which he painted the two large canvases now in the Capitol at Washington, D.C., The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and Chasm of the Colorado. In 1884 he became a member of the National Academy of Design. As a painter Moran was strongly influenced by the art of Turner. Other examples of his painting are Bringing Home the Cattle (Buffalo, N.Y., Mus.); The Grand Canal, Venice; The Dream of the Orient; and Tower of Cortez, in Mexico, a watercolor. He also produced many etchings and magazine illustrations on wood.
Worth Brehm
American, 1883-1928