(Palmanova 1762–1844 Milan)
The Molo, with the Palazzo della Zecca and the Biblioteca Marciana, the church of Santa Maria della Salute beyond,
oil on canvas, 65 x 80.2 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private European collection;
where acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to Fabrizio Magani for confirming the attribution of the present painting.

We are also grateful to Dario Succi for independently confirming the attribution of the present painting.

The present painting depicts the entrance to the Grand Canal, taken from the Molo. On the right the Todaro column at the entrance to St. Mark’s Square is visible, followed by the sixteenth-century palaces of the Zecca and the Biblioteca Marciana. On the other side of the canal is the Basilica della Salute.

Bison’s painting relates to Canaletto’s composition, formerly in the collection of the Duke of Leeds and now conserved in the Castello Sforzesco, Milan; it is likely that Bison used the engraving taken from Canaletto’s original by Antonio Visentini and published in the Urbis Venetiarum Prospectus Celebriores (1742, republished several times until the second half of the nineteenth century) as a model.

Bison here recovers the sharp and idealised vision of an already past, eighteenth-century Venice, updating it with a new and personal style, characterised by loose brushstrokes and a bright and brilliant colour palette. The work can be dated to the 1830s, when the artist was living in Milan, where he spent his last years working to satisfy the demands of the flourishing Lombard-Venetian market, which was sensitive to the taste for ‘historical romanticism’ that characterised Bison’s mature production.

Bison began working as a theatre painter alongside the stage designer Antonio Mauro, from whom he learnt the technique of rapid execution and a marked scenographic taste, characteristics that would mark all his later activity. In the last years of the eighteenth century he moved to Trieste, where he was active for thirty years, making a decisive contribution to the development of the new neo-classical taste in the city, for example with the decoration of Palazzo della Borsa and Palazzo Carciotti, and in 1824 he was appointed an honorary member of the Venice Academy. From 1831 he lived in Milan, working with agent Raffaello Tosoni and exhibiting at the Brera exhibitions.