Veduti and the Historical Moment.
In a joint exhibition held at the Getty and Cleveland Museum s held last year, a number of paintings by Guardi, Canaletto and Panini were used to illustrate how some view painting by these artists actually marked a historical event such as a visit by a VIP to a building or site.1 These pictures- in the words of the exhibition’s curator “simultaneously record an occasion and its topographical setting.”2 As the title of the exhibition suggests, this makes the painter something of a historical eye witness observing distinguished visitors like kings, princes, ambassadors absorbed into the long, horizontal view, though the artist does take care to make their presence visible to the external viewer of the picture. The display of pageantry in such pictures as showing dignified visitors like Canaletto’s paintings of the majestic Bucintoro (state barge of the Doges of Venice); or the visit of the Duc de Choiseul’s visit to St Peter’s Square in Rome (above); or Guardi’s depiction of Duke Alvise IV Mocenigo in San Marco turn the picture into a “reportorial view” since like a current newspaper photograph of a royal arrival or departure in some foreign country, it turns picture into historical document. Not only outside ceremonial visits come under this category, but also the pictures famous people visiting the opera or the theatre as in Panini’s views of musical experiences.
1Peter Björn Kerber, Eyewitness Views: Making History in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Getty Museum, 2017),
2Ibid, 1.
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