Provenance: private collection.
We have already discussed some of the Venetian vedute among the oeuvre of Giuseppe Bernardino Bison, but he also painted a few Roman, Neapolitan and
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Provenance: private collection.
We have already discussed some of the Venetian vedute among the oeuvre of Giuseppe Bernardino Bison, but he also painted a few Roman, Neapolitan and
Florentine vedute, hence the value of the small canvas presented here. There is no known evidence of Bison residing in Florence although the majority of the most probable sources have been explored. Could this canvas have been painted or drawn after a hypothetical trip to Florence or is it a product of the artist’s imagination? In any event, around 1740, Bernardo Bellotto (1720-1780) left Venice for a trip to Rome. He passed through Florence on the way resulting in six paintings of the city, including one entitled Florence, Piazza delle Signoria, looking towards the Palazzo Vecchio currently in the collection of the Szépmüvészeti muzeum in Budapest. He may not necessarily have finished all of these works while in Florence. Some of them could have been painted, either partially or completely, in Canaletto’s Venetian workshop, which Bellotto no doubt continued to share. Thus, if Bellotto might have painted Florentine scenes from such a distance, working from sketches done on location, why should Bison not have used the same source for this canvas? How this painting came into being remains shrouded in mystery, but this in no way detracts from its quality. The freshness of its harmony, its luminosity and the technical mastery it displays in the rendering of the architecture, in the depiction of the austere Palazzo Vecchio as well as the loge dei Lanzi, amply confirm Bison’s talents.
Palmanova 1762 - Milan 1844
Born in Palmanova in Friuli in 1762, Giuseppe Bernardino Bison occupies a special place among the painters who prolonged the vedutist tradition at the turn of the 18th...
read morePalmanova 1762 - Milan 1844
Born in Palmanova in Friuli in 1762, Giuseppe Bernardino Bison occupies a special place among the painters who prolonged the vedutist tradition at the turn of the 18th century. An eclectic and versatile artist, he also left behind an important oeuvre as a painter and decorator, following in the prestigious footsteps of Tiepolo, Guardi, Ricci, Zaïs and Diziani: numerous palaces and villas in Ferrara, Padua, Treviso, Udine, Trieste and the surrounding areas bear witness to his ability as a fresco artist. Essentially dedicating himself to topographical veduta in his easel paintings, he nevertheless dealt with a wide variety of subjects, including fantasy. Other than these two aspects of his art, he produced an impressive number of graphic works.
In 1831, he settled in Milan and from 1834 to 1838, he made a series of journeys which took him successively to Florence, Rome, Naples and Paestum, thus broadening his vedutist repertoire.
As regards his protean body of work, we should emphasise – besides the variety of subjects – the extreme quality of his pictorial production, making him one of the most worthy epigones of the Venetian vedutist tradition in the 18th century.
