Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum | Bush-Reisinger Museum | Arthur M. Sackler Museum

By the mid-eighteenth century, Venice was renowned as the center of vedute, or paintings of views. These pictures were popular with travelers on the Grand Tour. Like postcards or posters, they reminded their owners of their travels; but they also confirmed the worldly status of people whose rooms they adorned. Guardi, one of the greatest painters of this genre, chose the minor island of the Madonnetta to create a poetic — almost melancholy — picture of the lagoon. Although the painting shows the architectural complex on the island in fairly accurate detail as well as the topography of the lagoon with the island of Murano in the distance, Guardi’s treatment of them looks back to the painterly effects of great Venetian masters, such as Titian and Giorgione. Thus the captivating picture is a nuanced amalgamation of things Venetian and not a simple snapshot of the city.

Object Number

1959.185

People

Francesco Guardi, Italian (Venice, Italy 1712 - 1793 Venice, Italy)

Title

The Isola della Madonnetta on the Lagoon of Venice

Other Titles

Alternate Title: Island on the Lagoon, The Isola della Madonetta on the Venetian Lagoon

Classification

Paintings

Work Type

painting

Date

c. 1785-1790

Culture

Italian

Persistent Link

https://hvrd.art/o/227642

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

sight: 35.6 x 55.2 cm (14 x 21 3/4 in.)
frame: 55.5 x 75.5 x 6.3 cm (21 7/8 x 29 3/4 x 2 1/2 in.)

Credit Line

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Charles E. Dunlap

Accession Year

1959

Object Number

1959.185

Division

European and American Art

Contact

am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu

The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request.

Hermann W. Williams, "Drawings and Related Paintings By Francesco Guardi", The Art Quarterly, Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, 1939), II, no. 3, p. 272, note 14

H. Travers Newton, "A Technical Comparison of Three Paintings by Francesco Guardi: Isola de Madonnetta, Canale della Giudecca con le Zattere, and Capricio: Landscape in Ruins" (thesis (certificate in conservation), Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, 1979), Unpublished, pp. 1-22 passim

Edgar Peters Bowron, European Paintings Before 1900 in the Fogg Art Museum: A Summary Catalogue including Paintings in the Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 1990)

Jane Martineau and Andrew Robison, The Glory of Venice: Art in the Eighteenth Century, exh. cat., Yale University Press (New Haven, CT, 1994), pp. 318-319, repr. in color fig. 215

Charles Beddington and Amanda Bradley, Venice: Canaletto and his Rivals, exh. cat., National Gallery (London, 2010), cat. no. 64, repr. color p. 147

Ideal [Dis-] Placements: Old Masters at the Pulitzer, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis, 10/24/2008 - 10/03/2009

Venice: Canaletto and his Rivals, National Gallery, London, 10/13/2010 - 01/16/2011; National Gallery of Art, Washington, 02/20/2011 - 05/30/2011

Ancient to Modern, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 01/31/2012 - 06/01/2013

32Q: 2220 18th-19th Century, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 11/16/2014 - 01/01/2050

Google Art Project

• Straus.8080

  Artist of original: Francesco Guardi

  X-radiograph(s) of "The Isola della Madonnetta on the Lagoon of Venice"

  Photographs

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of European and American Art at am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu