Giuseppe Bernardino Bison

(Palmanova 1762–1844 Milan)
Piazza San Marco, Venice, looking East towards the Basilica,
oil on canvas, 47.5 x 64.5 cm, framed
We are grateful to Dario Succi for confirming the attribution of the present painting and for his help in cataloguing this lot.

The view depicts one of the most important and iconic buildings in Venice, the thousand year old Saint Mark’s Basilica, with the Old and New Procuracies. As is often the case in Bison’s works, the scene is based on an etching by Antonio Visentini derived from a painting by Canaletto that is now conserved in the Fitzwilliam collection. The engraving is part of the 'Urbis Venetiarum Prospectus Celebriores', a series consisting of thirty-eight views published in 1742 on commission from the English merchant Joseph Smith (D. Succi, La Serenissima nello specchio di rame, Castelfranco Veneto 2013, I, no. 40, p. 217). Here, Bison reinterprets Canaletto’s model by reproposing his typical small, lively human figures– the so-called 'macchiette'– while the way he depicts architecture, the rosy sky and the clouds’ shape are unmistakably Bison’s.

Giuseppe Bernardino Bison was born in Palmanova del Friuli and when he was still a youth, he entered the Venetian artistic milieu. Here, he achieved considerable success, even as a decorator of interiors. He gained the greatest acclaim, however, as a landscape and view painter, to the extent that by circa 1800 he had gained a significant patronage ubstantial in Trieste, a city which was then inhabited by a wealthy bourgeoisie who were actively collecting contemporary art. This community adopted Bison for his ability to unite the delicacy of eighteenth-century art, with a significant revitalisation of subject and style proper to the cultural renewal of the nineteenth century. According to Dario Succi, this view of Piazza San Marco can be dated to this period, shortly after the artist’s arrival in Trieste.