Signed and dated:
Caffi 1858

Provenance
Pandolfini, Florence, 21 April 2015, lot 155
Private collection

This small oil painting, remarkable also for the rarity of its support—a copper plate—represents a significant addition to the catalogue of Ippolito Caffi, the great Venetian view painter. The use of copper has enabled the artist to achieve effects of exceptional transparency and refinement. 

Signed and dated 1858, the painting can be associated with other intense Venetian views from the same year, such as Morning Effect on the Piazzetta and Venice, Piazza San Marco, which, though executed in a different technique (oil on cardboard), are likewise characterised by the same crystalline luminosity that conveys the magical atmosphere of the place under the specific atmospheric conditions in which the painter found himself working.

In these original glimpses of the great Piazza, Caffi appears to experiment each time with a different visual cut and varying effects. The charm of our view lies above all in the unusual angle chosen by the artist: the façade of the Basilica is not shown frontally, but rather placed diagonally and made the true protagonist of the scene. It is framed on the right by the presence, almost in the foreground, of the soaring mass of the Campanile of San Marco, which is not entirely captured within the selected visual field. In the distance, one glimpses the Gothic façade of the Doge’s Palace, and beyond the two monumental columns of the Piazzetta, the panoramic view is closed by the silhouette of the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, with its basilica designed by Andrea Palladio.

This is a lively and highly dynamic image, thanks to the optical skill with which the great view painter has retraced and reimagined such a singular and oft-depicted urban space. Without doubt, the experimentation with an unusual support—by then almost obsolete—such as a thin copper sheet, allowed Caffi to achieve effects of brilliance, luminosity and transparency that are quite distinctive. The painting is further characterised by a rapid and fluid brushwork that seems to capture, with extraordinary immediacy, fleeting atmospheric and lighting impressions.

Note also the vividness with which the artist, using just a few brushstrokes, rendered the figures animating the square on what seems to be a clear summer’s day. A truly masterful touch is found, finally, in the long orange streaks with which he painted the three flagpoles rising from the bronze pedestals still standing before the façade of the Basilica of San Marco, lending them an unusual and striking chromatic quality.