Often as he paints the same subjects he never becomes mechanical or photographic. We may sometimes tire of the monotony of Canale’s unerring perspective and accurate buildings, but Guardi always finds some new rendering, some fresh point of interest. Sometimes he gives us a summer day, when Venice stands out in light, her white palaces reflected in the sun-illumined water; sometimes he is arrested by old churches bathed in shadow and fusing into the rich, dark tones of twilight. His boats and figures are introduced with great spirit and brio, and are alive with that handling which a French critic has described as his griffe endiablée.

Francesco Guardi. S. MARIA DELLA SALUTE. London.
(Photo, Mansell and Co.)

His masterly and spirited painting of crowds enables him to reproduce for us all those public ceremonies which Venice retained as long as the Republic lasted: yearly pilgrimages of the Doge to Venetian churches, to the Salute to commemorate the cessation of the plague, to San Zaccaria on Easter Day, the solemn procession on Corpus Christi Day, receptions of ambassadors, and, most gorgeous of all, the Feast of the Wedding of the Adriatic. He has faithfully preserved the ancient ceremonial which accompanied State festivities. In the “Fête du Jeudi Gras” (Louvre) he illustrates the acrobatic feats which were performed before Doge Mocenigo. A huge Temple of Victory is erected on the Piazzetta, and gondoliers are seen climbing on each other’s shoulders and dancing upon ropes. His motley crowds show that the whole population, patricians as well as people, took part in the feasts. He has also left many striking interiors: among others, that of the Sala del Gran Consiglio, where sometimes as many as a thousand persons were assembled, the “Reception of the Doge and Senate by Pius IV.” (which formed one of the series ordered by Pietro Edwards), or the fine “Interior of a Theatre,” exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts in 1911, belonging to a series of which another is at Munich.

In his landscapes Guardi does not pay very faithful attention to nature. The landscape painters of the eighteenth century, as Mr. Simonson points out, were not animated by any very genuine impulse to study nature minutely. It was the picturesque element which appealed to them, and they were chiefly concerned to reproduce romantic features, grouped according to fancy. Guardi composes half fantastic scenes, introducing classic remains, triumphal arches, airy Palladian monuments. His capricci include compositions in which Roman ruins, overgrown with foliage, occupy the foreground of a painting of Venetian palaces, but in which the combination is carried out with so much sparkle and nervous life and such charm of style, that it is attractive and piquant rather than grotesque.

England is richest in Guardis, of any country, but France in one respect is better off, in possessing no less than eleven fine paintings of public ceremonials. Guardi may be considered the originator of small sketches, and perhaps the precursor of those glib little views which are handed about the Piazza at the present day. His drawings are fairly numerous, and are remarkably delicate and incisive in touch. A large collection which he left to his son is now in the Museo Correr. In his later years he was reduced to poverty and used to exhibit sketches in the Piazza, parting with them for a few ducats, and in this way flooding Venice with small landscapes. The exact spot occupied by his bottega is said to be at the corner of the Palazzo Reale, opposite the Clock Tower. The house in which he died still exists in the Campiello della Madonna, No. 5433, Parrocchia S. Canziano, and has a shrine dedicated to the Madonna attached to it. When quite an old man, Guardi paid a visit to the home of his ancestors, at Mastellano in the Austrian Tyrol, and made a drawing of Castello Corvello on the route. To this day his name is remembered with pride in his Tyrolean valley.

SOME WORKS OF GUARDI

Bergamo.Lochis: Landscapes.
Berlin.Grand Canal; Lagoon; Cemetery Island.
London.Views in Venice.
Milan.Museo Civico: Landscapes.
Poldi-Pezzoli: Piazzetta; Dogana; Landscapes.
Oxford.Taylorian Museum: Views in Venice.
Padua.Views in Venice.
Paris.Procession of the Doge to S. Zaccaria; Embarkment in Bucentaur; Festival at Salute; “Jeudi Gras” in Venice; Corpus Christi; Sala di Collegio; Coronation of Doge.
Turin.Cottage; Staircase; Bridge over Canal.
Venice.Museo Correr: The Ridotto; Parlour of Convent.
Verona.Landscapes.
Wallace Collection.The Rialto; San Giorgio Maggiore (two); S. Maria della Salute; Archway in Venice; Vaulted Arcades; The Dogana.