A Guest at the Palace | “The capriccio with a campiello” by Francesco Guardi

19 September — 15 November 2015
Palazzo Cini. The Gallery, Venice

Francesco Guardi, the capriccio with a campiello, 1760, oil on canvas, Musée Jacquemart-André di Parigi.

The Guest at the Palace initiative, promoted by the Art History Institute of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, was created through collaborations with some of the most prestigious Italian and international museum institutions. Conceived to temporarily enrich the museum holdings of Galleria di Palazzo Cini, the project features the exhibition of particularly important artworks granted on extraordinary loan and hosted for several months in the historic residence of Vittorio Cini, which houses the masterpieces of his remarkable art collection.

From 19 September to 15 November 2015, the Palazzo Cini Gallery is hosting Capriccio with a Small Square by Francesco Guardi (Venice, 5 October 1712 – Venice, 1 January 1793), on loan from the Jacquemart-André in Paris. The loan coincides with the temporary transfer of Pontormo’s Double Portrait of Friends from the Palazzo Cini Gallery for the exhibition on Florentine portraiture in the sixteenth century at the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris, which runs from 11 September 2015 to 25 January 2016.

The capriccio with a campiello

Francesco Guardi’s Capriccio con campiello is a vivid, immersive glimpse into the urban landscape of a melancholic Venice, reimagined through a sensibility that many have described as ‘pre-Romantic’: the glimpse of this small square, surrounded by buildings worn and marked by time, with a monastery in the background topped by a typical Venetian dome, is framed by a portico teeming with vegetation, whose scale enhances the visual effect of the dizzying diagonal perspective.

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Darting, textured brushstrokes succinctly create the figures that animate the space, whilst swirls and touches of white, green and brown create a fluid chiaroscuro weave typical of the artist’s fragmented and tremulous style.

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All editions

May 24 – July 21, 2014

Portrait of a Young Man with a Lute by Agnolo Bronzino

September 5 – November 2, 2014

Adoration of the Shepherds by Lorenzo Lotto

June 17 – September 28, 2015

The Madonna of Pontassieve by Beato Angelico

September 19 – November 15, 2015

Capriccio with a Small Square by Francesco Guardi

April 8 – June 6, 2016