View Of Piazza San Marco

View of Piazza San Marco

Oil on canvas, 69 x 99 cm

With frame, 92 x 119 cm

Signed lower right “Guarnieri”

1866 was a crucial year in the history of Venice: the period of long Austrian domination ended and the city became part of the Kingdom of Italy. Already from the first months of the year, the expectations of Venetian patriots for the new European political climate were growing, as documented by a series of publications which, under a harmless appearance (Austrian censorship always remained rigorous), alluded to the forthcoming unification with the Kingdom of Italy. After the armistice of Cormons on 12 August and the peace signed in the Treaty of Vienna on 3 October, popular joy exploded at the imminent liberation, which had seemed compromised after the heavy Italian defeats at Lissa and Custoza. Finally free from censorship, the Venetian press was unleashed and flooded the city with a series of publications that addressed and debated the hottest topics of the moment: from the economic and moral damage caused to the city by the long Austrian rule to the abandonment of port activity and maritime trade in favor of Trieste, with the consequent economic and employment crisis; from the stagnation of industrial development due to lack of public support initiatives and adequate infrastructure to the suffocating bureaucracy. The Austrian depredations of important parts of the Venetian heritage (paintings, archival documents, manuscripts) were denounced, illustrated in detail by the Swiss consul Victor Ceresole and other Venetian intellectuals, in the hope of a rapid and complete implementation of the clauses of the Treaty of Vienna, which provided for the restitution of stolen works of art and documents.Once reunification had taken place, the enthusiasm for the future was manifested in a notable production of projects and proposals presented to the new Italian administration for the relaunch of the city in style through the promotion of maritime trade, the containment of duties, the reactivation of the Arsenal, the development of the railway network. To celebrate the reunification that had taken place, Vittorio Emanuele was expected to build major works, including new bridges over the Grand Canal of great visual impact, works that were never built but which testify to the intellectual fervor of the moment. The euphoria that spread in the city is evidenced by many celebratory compositions (popular choirs, songs, poems) that compensated for the smallness of the poetic level with the display of a vibrant civic passion.

The scene represented here could be set in 1866: Piazza San Marco appears embellished with a series of Italian flags, designed to celebrate the liberation of Venice from the long and painful Austrian domination. The subject in question is found with relative frequency with regard to Venetian painting of the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, as evidenced by the works of Vettore Zanetti, Cipriano Mannucci and Jean Belliure. The work in question is a most valuable document for the reconstruction of a particularly relevant segment of the unitary parable of the Kingdom of Italy. The technique of the painting, which is characterized by its fast and indefinite brushstrokes, is certainly influenced by the great masters of French impressionism, whose notions spread in the Italian context since the eighties of the nineteenth century.