Palazzo Dei Dogi, Venice, Anticollegio With The Fireplace By Sansovino, J. Th. Hansen, 1885

Palazzo dei Dogi, Venice, Anticollegio with the fireplace by Sansovino, J. Th. Hansen, 1885

Oil on canvas, signed and dated 1885; on the reverse there is an old printed label bearing the name J. T. Hansen and the Danish inscription “Kamin i Dogepaladset i Venedig”, confirming the subject represented.

The painting depicts the interior of the Anticollegio in the Doge’s Palace in Venice, the reception hall where ambassadors waited before being admitted to the Collegio, the central governing body of the Republic. The room is shown in its appearance after the great fire of 1574, when the palace was renewed with a rich decorative programme celebrating the power of the Serenissima. In the foreground appears the monumental 16th-century fireplace designed by Jacopo Sansovino, one of the most characteristic elements of the hall; on the wall can be recognised one of the large mythological canvases by Jacopo Tintoretto now preserved in the Anticollegio.

Joseph Theodor Hansen (Randers 1848 – 1912), a Danish painter trained at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, travelled in Italy during the 1880s, where he executed precise views of historic monuments and interiors in Rome, Florence and Venice. He is known for his refined depictions of Italian palaces and architectural interiors, painted with great accuracy and with the typically nineteenth-century taste for monumental spaces and the solemn atmosphere of historic buildings.