View of San Marco and the Doge’s Palace in Venice, oil on canvas, 97.5 x 145 cm, framed

We are grateful to Dr. Dario Succi for suggesting the attribution for the present painting.

Giuseppe Bernardino Bison was the last great popularizer of the celebrated 18th-Century Venetian veduta or view painting. He used an existing pictorial language and according to Succi was able to renew it with a surprising and unmistakable liveliness of style.

The veduta considered here is an example of a whimsical interpretation of one of the most well known images of Venice made famous throughout Europe by the Venetian vedutisti of the 18th Century, such as Luca Carlevarjisj, Canaletto, Michele Marieschi and Francesco Guardi. The iconographic source to which Bison refers in creating this veduta must be Antonio Visentini’s engraving depicting The Return of the Bucentaur to the Molo on Ascension Day, which completes the series of fourteen views of the Grand Canal painted by Canaletto for Joseph Smith between 1728 and 1733. Using the engraving as a basic framework for the veduta, Bison works freely to create an original image, placing Palladio’s Chiesa del Redentore behind the Palazzo Ducale. The artist also introduces changes to other monumental buildings, such as the architecture of the Prisons and the Granaries.

The present compostion is in part an imaginary view and is characterized by a strong perspectival structure together with an accurate definition of architectural elements. This canvas restores the ‘vedutistic’ image to the spirit of the reforming ideals that had guided the great vedutisti, dedicated to realizing a visual model of an ideal city.