The poetry of light. Venetian drawings from the National Gallery of Washington

One of the most important collections of Venetian drawings in the world belongs to the National Gallery of Art. This extraordinary collection, comprising over 130 works produced between the 16th and 18thcentury, when Venice and its mainland possessions represented a major centre for the finest Italian artists, returns to its original home in a major exhibition at the Museo Correr.
The exhibition opens with the drawings of the most important artists of the late 15th century, Andrea Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini and Vittore Carpaccio, and continues with works by Giorgione, Domenico Campagnola, Lorenzo Lotto and Titian and includes an extremely rare drawing by Jacopo Bassano, which in turn introduces the selection of drawings dating from the mid-16th century.
These are followed by figure and compositional studies by such artists as Veronese, Tintoretto and Paolo Farinati. The 18th century is represented by a large variety of works: the delicate rococo style of artists such as Sebastiano Ricci, Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini and Rosalba Carriera are counter-balanced by the intense study of “ordinary people” by Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, whose works were the first European drawings to be collected as works worthy of collection in their own right.
There will also be works by Giambattista Tiepolo on display and a special section dedicated to landscape, with some coloured gouaches by Marco Ricci and Francesco Zuccarelli, together with views of canals, lagoons and palazzi by Canaletto and Francesco Guardi, and architectural “renderings” and capriccios by   Giovanni Battista Piranesi.
While the history of Venetian art per se is generally considered to terminate with the fall of the Republic in 1797, it nevertheless continued to flourish in the 19th century, when Venetian artists, despite moving abroad to work, contributed to the spread of new ideas that we find in currents such as Neoclassicism and in drawings for architecture. By contrast, the city, with its canals and calm, evocative lagoon atmospheres – important elements for both Romanticism and Impressionism – continued to attract large numbers of foreign artists who, like John Singer Sargent, were literally dazzled by it.

Vai alla guida d'arte di Venice