Capriccio with Buildings on a River by a Bridge

Artist Michele Marieschi (Italian, 1710 - 1743)

Date1730-1735

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 10 3/4 × 17 3/4 inches (27.31 × 45.09 cm)
Framed: 16 7/8 × 23 13/16 inches (42.86 × 60.5 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust

Object number31-51 B

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

European Art

Terms

DescriptionThe foreground is almost entirely occupied by a river that tapers off in the distance at right. Various rustic buildings flank the composition. The one at right has a large adjoining archway through which light streams from the right, illuminating the riverbank at left, with its two moored barges. The middle ground is dominated at center by a two-story domed building, which is pierced at right by a tall arch. Leading rightward from this building is a bridge that ends in a palazzo flooded with light. To the left of the domed structure is a view of a hill town with several bell towers; to the right is a pointed tower, beyond which appear snow-capped mountains.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Venetian Painting of the Eighteenth Century, City Art Museum of St. Louis, March 1-31, 1936, no. 26.

Canaletto, Art Gallery of Ontario, October 17-November 15, 1964; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, December 4, 1964-January 10, 1965; Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, January 29-February 28, 1965, no. 134.

The Circle of Canaletto, Allentown Art Museum, PA, February 21-March 21, 1971, no. 31.

City Views, Kansas City, MO, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, May 31-July 10, 1983, no. 19B.

Gallery Label

In contrast to the relatively accurate views of Venice by Guardi and Canaletto, capricci, like these, were imaginary inventions. In both of these examples, Marieschi exploits the contrast of dilapidated and complete buildings for picturesque effect, a device often used by painters of stage scenery, a profession Marieschi practiced early in his career.

Provenance

Dr. Alexander von Frey (1882-1951), Paris, by 1931;

Purchased from Frey by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1931.

Published References

The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Handbook of the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1933), 137.

"Special Loan Exhibition of Venetian Painting of the Eighteenth Century," Bulletin of the City Art Museum of St. Louis 21 (March 1936): 29.

The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 2^nd ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1941), 169.

Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 262.

Rodolfo Pallucchini, La pittura veneziana del settecento (Venice: Istituto per la collaborazione culturale, 1960), 194, (repro.).

Rodolfo Pallucchini, Die Venezianische Malerei des 18 Jahrhunderts, trans. Hanna Kiel (Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1961), 190, (repro.).

William G. Constable, Canaletto, exh. cat. (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1964), 161, (repro.).

The Circle of Canaletto, exh. cat. (Allentown, Pennsylvania: Allentown Art Museum, 1971), unpaginated, (repro.).

Ralph T. Coe, “The Baroque and Rococo in France and Italy,” Apollo 96, no. 130 (December 1972): 541 [repr. in Denys Sutton, ed., William Rockhill Nelson Gallery, Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City (London: Apollo Magazine, 1972), 73].

Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 120, 493, 589.

Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 260.

Dizionario enciclopedico dei pittori e degli incisori italiani, vol. 7 (Milan: Mondadori, 1983), 202.

Ross E. Taggart and Roger Ward, City Views, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1983), 11, 25, (repro.).

Terisio Pignatti, Five Centuries of Italian Painting, 1300-1800, from The Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation (Houston: The Foundation, 1985), 201.

George Keyes et al., A Collection Rediscovered: European Paintings from the Tweed Museum of Art, exh. cat. (Minneapolis: The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1986), 75, 76n6, 76n11.

Ralph Toledano, Michele Marieschi: L'opera completa (Milan: A. Mondadori, 1988), no. C39, p. 147, (repro.).

Eliot W. Rowlands, The Collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: Italian Paintings 1300-1800, (Kansas City, MO: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 372-376.

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