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Whistler's "Venice", and in Guardi's vision of cupolas, stairways, roofs, gondolas, and waterways. Monet sees clearly, and he sees truly, but does he see beautifully? is his an enchanted vision? And is not every picture that fails to move, to transport, to enchant, a mistake? A work of art is complete in itself. But is any one of these pictures complete in itself?
No. 494 at Hertford House, a glittering view of the Dogana, is perhaps Guardi's masterpiece in England; No. 135 in the National Gallery, Canaletto's. Pietro Longhi was born in Venice in 1702, five years after Hogarth was born in London. He died in 1762, two years before Hogarth in Chiswick. I mention the English painter because Longhi is often referred to as the Venetian Hogarth.
Guardi's picture of S. Giorgio Maggiore in the Accademia, No. 707, shows us that the earlier campanile, which fell in 1774, was higher and slenderer than the present one. We now come to Room XVII, which has a number of small interesting works, some by great masters. Mantegna is here with a S. George, which I reproduce on the opposite page. Very beautiful it is, both in feeling and colour.
Francesco Guardi was born in Venice in 1712 and died there in 1793, and all his life he was translating the sparkling charm of his watery city into paint. His master was Canaletto, whom he surpassed in charm but never equalled in foot-rule accuracy or in that gravity which makes a really fine picture by the older man so distinguished a thing. Very little is known of Guardi's life.
When the elegant spired cupolas at each corner of the palace roof were built, I do not know, but they look like a happy afterthought. The small balcony overlooking the lagoon, which is gained from the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, and which in Canaletto and Guardi's eighteenth-century pictures always, as now, has a few people on it, was built in 1404.
In the outer sacristy the kneeling figure of Doge Agostino Barbarigo should be looked for. The Salute in Guardi's day seems to have had the most entrancing light blue curtains at its main entrance, if we may take the artist as our authority. See No. 2098 in the National Gallery, and also No. 503 at the Wallace collection. But now only a tiny side door is opened.
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