Francesco Tironi

(Venice active in the last quarter of the 18th Century)
The Grand Canal, Venice, looking South-East towards the Rialto Bridge with the Fabbriche Nuove to the right and the Palazzo Michiel dalle Colonne on the left,
oil on canvas, 53 x 81 cm, framed

Provenance:
with Cesare Lampronti, Rome, 1986 (as Bernardo Bellotto, accompanied by a certificate issued by Giuliano Briganti, 27 March 1986)

We are grateful to Charles Beddington for suggesting the attribution and for his help in cataloguing the present painting.

Tironi was primarily known as a draughtsman as twenty-four drawings by him of islands in the Venetian Lagoon were engraved by Antonio Sandi and published as a set after 1779 (see D. Succi, Francesco Tironi. Ultimo Vedutista del Settecento Venezia, Pordenone 2004, pp. 5-18).

Several paintings signed with the initials ‘F T’ have significantly helped to establish him as a distinctive figure who may have been a studio assistant of Canaletto, before being influenced by Francesco Guardi (see C. Beddington, catalogue of the exhibition Venice: Canaletto and his Rivals, National Gallery, London, and National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2010-11, pp. 130-1). Tironi’s paintings are rare and the present is a significant example and an important addition to his oeuvre. Another version of this composition of similar size (56.2 x 79.3 cm) was at Sotheby’s, London, 9 December 2010, as lot 227 (sold for € 272,897).

To the right of the composition it is possible to see the Campo della Pescaria, and behind that the elegant curve of Jacopo Sansovino’s Fabbriche Nuove, which was designed in 1554. On the left side, the most prominent building is the Palazzo Michiel dalle Colonne.

The present composition is loosely based on Antonio Visentini’s engraving, plate 7 in part II of the 1742 edition of his Prospectus Magni Canalis Venetiarum, after a painting by Canaletto which is now in an Italian private collection (see W. G. Constable, Canaletto: Giovanni Antonio Canal 1697-1768, Oxford 1962, I, pl. 50; II, no. 241).