Italian school circa 1860, The Basilica of San Marco under a low sun

Ippolito Caffi (1809-1866) attributed. The Basilica of San Marco under a low sun around 1860.

Oil on metal, 44.5 cm by 28 cm
Antique frame, 53 cm by 35.5 cm

This superb painting shows us a Basilica of Saint Mark bathed in a low sun at the end of the afternoon, which gives a quite striking effect with these warm and contrasting colors. The artist loves this time of day, he painted many paintings with this color palette around 1860 (from 1858, the date of his return to Venice, to his death in 1668).

Ippolito Caffi (1809-1866)

Trained at the Academy of Venice, his eventful career led him to stay in Paris, Naples, London, Spain, returning regularly to Rome and Venice, not to mention a great trip to the Orient (1843). He brought back many drawings from everywhere. He took an active part in the battles of the Risorgimento. Highly renowned, he received commissions from the Pope and exhibited successfully in Venice, Milan, Rome and Trieste, as well as in Paris and London. He was essentially a precise landscape painter, whose works, clear and rigorously constructed - sometimes pretexts for curious artificial lighting effects but also for delicacies worthy of Corot -, continued the tradition of the urban landscape of a Canaletto (the Pincio in the morning, 1846; View of Turin, 1850 the Boulevard Saint-Denis in Paris, 1855, Venice, GAM, Ca'Pesaro). The Correr Museum in Venice also holds a series of his drawings. (source: Larousse) Born to Giacomo and Maria Castellani, he studied in Belluno, then in Padua with his painter cousin Pietro Paoletti, who worked with another Belluno painter of neoclassical taste, Giovanni De Min; finally at the Venice Academy, where he was able to meet the Venetian landscape painters of the 18th century. His Rialto Bridge, at Ca' Pesaro, is an example of this period. In this environment of serious application, but little respite, Caffi began to feel a sense of unease: so in January 1832 he moved to Rome with his cousin Paoletti. Attending his studio, Caffi perfected his technique, immersing himself in the genre of the view. At the beginning of 1833, Caffi opened his own studio, devoting himself to painting and drawing. Living in Rome, he often moved to other cities to exhibit his works. In Rome he also took a trip in the hot-air balloon of the Frenchman Francisque Arban (1815-1849), with the photographer Giacomo Caneva (1813-1865), which impressed him so much that it led him to paint two almost romantic paintings. In 1841 he decorated the Roman hall of the Caffè Pedrocchi in Padua. In 1843 he left for Naples and from there for the East, visiting Athens, Turkey, Palestine and Egypt; he returned to Italy in 1844, laden with sketches and works. In 1848 he left Rome for Friuli, where he took part in the war against Austria; taken prisoner, he escaped and stayed a year in Venice. In 1849 he settled in Genoa, Switzerland, and in 1850 in Turin. After a series of trips to London, where he exhibited at the Universal Exhibition, to Paris and Spain, he returned to Rome in 1855 and to Venice from 1858, where he was tried for "crime of public violence". In 1860 he was a political prisoner in the prisons of San Severo for three months, due to his frequent visits to Turin and Milan, which aroused the suspicions of the Austrian authorities. From there he returned to Milan, then went to Naples, where he joined Garibaldi's army. After 1860, with the unification of Italy, Caffi returned to Venice and resumed painting. He died in the sinking of the ship Re d'Italia during the Battle of Lissa in 1866, in the middle of the Third War of Independence. Caffi's work, although inspired by Venetian models of the 18th century, was able to modernize the pictorial vocabulary of views, both through the exploration of new points of view, as in night scenes, and through unusual themes, such as the flight of the hot air balloon. Highly appreciated during his lifetime, Caffi had to wait until the mid-1960s to be seriously considered by art historians. The great exhibition organized in Venice on the occasion of the centenary of his death allowed to re-evaluate his painting. His pictorial production was very numerous and part of it has been lost. Some works are preserved in the municipal museum of Belluno, many others are part of private collections and numerous museums.