(Padua 1813–1865 Rome)
A market in Piazza Navona, Rome,
oil on canvas, 75 x 100 cm, framed

We are grateful to Teresa Sacchi Lodispoto and Sabrina Spinazzè for suggesting the attribution and for their help in cataloguing this lot. They date the present painting to circa 1845.

The present painting represents the market that was held regularly in Piazza Navona before it was moved to Campo de’ Fiori in 1869. The painting can be dated to between 1841 and 1846 on the basis of the coats-of-arms positioned over the portal of Palazzo Pamphilij and above the entrance to Sant’Agnese in Agone, which belong to Pope Gregory XVI Cappellari.

This work belongs to the small group of views of Rome executed by Giacomo Caneva during the first half of the 1840s. These paintings are distinguished by his signature in the form of a dog (‘cane’ in Italian) followed by the letters ‘-va’ as seen in his views of the Piazza del Pantheon and the Tempio di Vesta al Foro Boario both in the Musei Civici, Padua. These and the present work can be compared for their rendering of the figures ‘a macchietta’, for their lively movement, as well as for the similar treatment of the fountains and the rendering of water, the window drapes caught in the breeze animating the architecture and the reuse of certain compositional devices, such as the placement of seated figures near the pillars around the fountains.

Giacomo Caneva has his roots in the tradition of the Venetian view painters, of which he is among the last exponents. The use of an aerial view point for the composition is typical of Canaletto (1697–1768) as was the use of the ‘camera ottica’ [optical chamber] to meticulously define the architecture, only later adding in the swiftly rendered and summary figures, beneath which the architectural outlines often show through. The clear crisp light that envelopes his views is also inspired by Canaletto.

Born in Padua, from 1834 Giacomo Caneva trained at the Accademia di Belle Arti, Venice, under the tutelage of Tranquillo Orsi (1791–1844), the stage-set designer of the Teatro La Fenice. Caneva had moved to Rome by 1841 when he began work on the decoration and arrangement of the gardens of Villa Torlonia. He subsequently took an interest in photography becoming one of the Italian pioneers of the medium. He represented Piazza Navona from the same southern point of view as in the present painting in a photograph taken a few years later. In his treatise, published in 1855, Caneva called himself a view painter and photographer, so as to underline the fact that his professional activity in both media progressed in parallel (see G. Caneva, Della fotografia: trattato pratico di Giacomo Caneva pittore prospettico, Rome 1855). He was a close friend of Ippolito Caffi (1809-1866) with whom he shared the same Venetian cultural references.