Italian School (c. 1930) - Il Canal Grande Con Santa Lucia (after Guardi)

Oil on canvas, lined.

In "Il Canal Grande con Santa Lucia e Santa Maria di Nazareth", Francesco Guardi displays his characteristic mastery of the Venetian veduta genre, moving away from the geometric rigidity of his contemporary Canaletto to embrace a much more vibrant, poetic and ephemeral atmosphere. The work captures a stretch of the Grand Canal bordered by the now-defunct buildings of Santa Lucia Church and Santa Maria di Nazareth Church (the Scalzi), immersing the viewer in the daily pulse of 18th-century Venice through an evocative parade of gondolas and boats. True to his late style, Guardi dissolves forms with rapid, nervous, impasto brushstrokes - his famous "tocchi" - where urban architecture loses its tectonic weight to become a theater of changing light. The real protagonist of the painting is the air itself: a damp, silvery atmosphere that saturates the sky and melts into the shimmering reflections of the water, transforming a landscape into a melancholy, lyrical visual poem about the transience of time in the city of canals.

- Image size unframed: 78 x 58 cm / 100 x 80 cm with custom frame.