Francesco Guardi
Venice, a view of the Rialto Bridge, Looking North, from the Fondamenta del Carbon
estimated price: £20 million / US$30 million
Masterpiece by Guardi to go under the hammer ‘Venice, a view of the Rialto Bridge, Looking North, from the Fondamenta del Carbon’, one of the most important paintings by Francesco Guardi, is going to be auctioned at Sotheby’s in July 2011, with an estimated price of £20 million / US$30 million]]>
February 26th, 2011, source: Sotheby’s
Painted in the late 1760s, the impressive 115 by 199.5cm (45¼ by 78½ in.) canvas is one of four works that Guardi painted on this grand scale. According to Sotheby’s, one of these four paintings was destroyed in a fire in the mid-20th century, and another one (“View of the Giudecca and the Zattere”) was sold at Sotheby’s Monaco for FF 94,350,000 / $15,866,476 / £9,889,937 in 1989, at the time the second highest price ever paid for an old master painting.
Alex Bell, International Head of Sotheby’s Old Master Paintings Department, said that the painting is impressive “notonly for its scale, but also for its extraordinary pictorial qualities”, noting “its impressionistic handling and virtuoso brushwork”. Along with Canaletto, Francesco Guardi is the most famous of the Venetian view painters of the 18th century.
The painting has also an excellent provenance, having been sold just once since it was acquired in Venice in 1768 by Chaloner Arcedeckne. The work was on loan to the Iveagh Bequest at Kenwood House in London, and it was featured in the great 1955 exhibition at the Royal Academy, European Masters from the 18th Century.
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