Francesco Guardi (Venice 1712-1793)

This picture is a fine example of the type of capricci that Guardi executed, often for Venetian patrons, who preferred such works for their display of the artist's powers of invention. The same sottoportico appears, in an elongated form, in a drawing by the artist in the Museo Correr of The Sottoportico e Cortile di Palazzo Zorzi, and in two other drawings in the Boymans-van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam, and the collection of the duc de Talleyrand, Paris ( Morassi, Op. cit., 1984, pp. 176-7, nos. 565, 566 and 568, figs. 558-60). Morassi comments that this capriccio is a 'buon esemplare del periodo maturo, ricco di notazioni originali' (loc. cit., 1973).