(Palmanova 1762–1844 Milan)
The ‘Giovedi Grasso’ Festival before the Ducal Palace in Venice,
oil on canvas, 81 x 111 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Italy;
art market, London;
where acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to Fabrizio Magani for his help in cataloguing the present lot.

The present painting represents the Giovedì Grasso festival which traditionally took place in the Piazzetta in Venice and was attended from the loggia of the Palazzo Ducale by the Doge. In the present compositon a large crowd of spectators is gathered to see the fireworks that will be set off from the towering macchina erected in the square, and watch the ‘forze d’Ercole’, a game in which two teams of acrobats, aided by poles, compete to build the tallest human pyramid as well as to see the ‘Svolo del turco’, a stunt in which a winged youth, attached at the waist to a system of pulleys, was released on a double rope attached to the Palazzo Ducale from the top of the Campanile (see L. Urbani, Processioni e feste dogali, Vicenza 1998).

The composition derives from an invention of Giovanni Antonio Canal, il Canaletto which was reproduced in a etching by Giambattista Brustolon in circa 1766, from which, Francesco Guardi also took inspiration for a version, for his series of the ‘feste dogali’, ducal celebrations (Musée du Louvre, Paris). It is therefore not be surprising that Bison also made use of this engraving for the composition of the present painting, and making use of his experience in the genre of view painting, veduta painting: He updated the example of the most celebrated Settecento specialist in the genre. Here, Bison describes details with clarity giving preference to recording objective historical fact. He gives attention to the description of buildings, and where necessary records alterations to the city’s urban fabric. Additionally, with his distinctively inventive figures. macchiette, he depicts episodes of everyday life which animated the city.

Magani dates the present painting to the artist’s Milanese period. Bison arrived in Milan in 1831 and produced view painting, vedute, confirming how the taste for view paintings in the eighteenth-century Venetian manner still flourished in sophisticated Milanese collecting circles.