Lot 91: Francesco Zanin (Venice active c. 1850)

Venice, with a Regatta in honor of Edward, Duke of York, 4th of June 1764
oil on canvas
28 3/8 x 44 1/8 in. (72 x 112 cm.)

This painting depicts one of the most memorable views of Venice, the point where the customs house divides the basin of Saint Mark into two arms. On the left is the Giudecca canal with the palladian outline of the church of the Redentore. On the right is the Grand Canal overshadowed by Baldasssare Longhena's cupola of the Church of the Salute and two monumental bissone - the sumptuous parade embarkations used by the lagoon's aristocracy.

The trend for bringing back to life the splendors of the 18th Century, particularly along the theme of 'Venetian Festivities' became very popular in the mid-18th Century. Francesco Zanin can clearly be placed in the same category as painters like Luigi Querena, who, in 1855, contributed to the genre of veduta painting with a historical digression with The fist fight in 1573 in Venice on the Foscarini bridge in the presence of Henri III of France on the balcony of the Foscarini Palace, or with Giovanni Grubacs who painted a slightly vague Night festivity on the Grand Canal in Venice.

The present composition's 'philological' detail of the two bissone allows us to link this work to a precise historical event on 4th June 1764: the stately procession celebrating the visit to the Serenissima of Edward Augustus of Brunswick Hanover, Prince of England and Duke of York.

The extremely ornate, typically rocaille, mythological decorations of the barges were obtainable at the time through a set of engravings in the Correr Museum which are still available to the general public today. Zanin was obviously familiar with this set of engravings as the details of the Fire bissone in the foreground and the Water bissone floating in the midground are exact replicas as those details found in the engravings.

With a fluid yet exact rendering of the architectural decors, with the golden yet never direct light of the summer sky, Zanin renews with the traditions that made Venetian veduta painting so famous in the past centuries.