イタリア Lezione

Piranesi のローマ

　Piranesi の 「 版画 」 が好きです。



　特に、ローマを題材にした細密な版画を眺めていると、一種、独特の心持ちになります。
　Piranesi と言えば、美術のみならず、建築の分野でも、良く知られている名だと思います。特に彼の 「 ローマ風景 」 に見られる、都市景観や古代遺跡の精密な描写は、その 「 精密さ 」 ゆえ、鑑賞する者を恐ろしいまでの力で画中に引きずり込みます。「 絵画 」 としても、また、精密な 「 建築史 」 の教科書としても魅力的な彼の画力は、「 ローマ 」 そのものが眼前にあるような錯覚を生み出すのでしょう。


　幸いながら、上野の国立西洋美術館に、Piranesi の作品が多く収蔵されています。
　現在、平常展ではありますが、西洋版画の特集が組まれ、Piranesi を鑑賞する事が出来るようです。空調の良く効いた静かな空間で、「 ローマ 」 に没入するのも悪くありません。「 もう 1 つのローマ散策 」 に、早速、出掛けてみたいと思います。







後記 ：

奇才 J. L. Borges が記した 『 Otras inquisiciones 』 の中に、Piranesi を想起させるような記述があります。もっとも、Borges の頭に浮かんだのは、幻想芸術としての Piranesi 作品であったのでしょうが、私にはどうでも良い事です。ともかく、先日この一節が目に留まって以来、「 久し振りに Piranesi を観たい ！ 」 という衝動に駆られている次第です。

（ 記事冒頭の絵は、「 トレヴィの泉 」 です。）

緑の目

　先日、院生との雑談で、久し振りに E. Munch の話題が出ました。



　美術史を専攻する彼女は、Munch の作品では、「 嫉妬 」 をテーマにした連作に興味があると言いました。
　成程、有名な 『 叫び 』 や 『 マドンナ 』 よりも、一般的に女性は、連作の 「 嫉妬 」 に惹かれるのかも知れません。その辺りの理由を彼女は、私に力説しましたが、私は不意に全く別の事が頭に浮かびました。



　W. Shakespeare の 『 Othello 』 に、次の様な一節があります。



O, beware, my lord, of jealousy ;
It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock
The meat it feeds on.



　「 嫉妬 ・・・ それは、緑の目をした怪物 ・・・ 」 です。
　熱病に似た愛の激情、その不可解な、時として自己破壊的衝動にすら駆られる錯乱が、何より典型的に現れる例が 「 嫉妬 」 でありましょう。私は、院生が語る Munch の 「 嫉妬 」 を聞きながら、この 「 緑の目をした怪物 」 の一節を思い浮かべました。


　「 嫉妬 」 に駆られる目が 「 緑 」 というは、とても面白いと思います。
それと同時に、理由は分りませんが、何処と無くイメージに合致するという感もします。気になったので、形容詞
green を Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ) で引いてみました。


　OED の green （ 形容詞 ） の第三項に 「 恐怖、嫉妬、不機嫌を表す色 」 とあります。
そして the green eye を成句として扱い、the eye of jealousy の意としてします。やはり、英語の green は、「 嫉妬 」 を想起させるイメージがあるようです。


　「 嫉妬 」 は、全くもって、自分自身の中から生まれる感情です。
　「 魂を揺さぶられる、時として殺意に似た嫉妬 ・・・ 」 とは言わないまでも、「 ちょっとだけ ・・・羨ましい ・・・ 」 と他人の恋慕を邪な気持ちで眺める自分の目が、「 緑色 」 に爛々と輝いていないかどうか気をつけていたいものです。


　Munch の 「 嫉妬 」 に描かれる男性の目も、心なしか 「 緑色 」 に見えます ・・・。







But jealous souls will not be answered so ;
They are not ever jealous for the cause,
But jealous for they are jealous. 'Tis a monster
Begot upon itself, born on itself.

・・・ Othello, 3. 4. 159-61 ： W. Shakespeare

The Early Style of Canaletto vol. 4

In these small works, sent to England in 1727, Canaletto abandoned the dramatic style and

strong chiaroscuro of his juvenile phase and embarked on an intense luminosity that placed the

emphasis on the details of the veduta and of the works of architecture of which it was made

up. The extent to which McSwiney's advice influenced this new shift is hard to tell, but one

gets the impression that the go-between's desire to obtain works more in keeping with the

taste of British buyers, and therefore more precise in their topography and accurate in their

pictorial representation, was perfectly in harmony with the painter's own desirs, and merely

accelerated a process that was already under way. Moreover, it was in just these years that

Newton's scientific theories on light and its breakdown into separate colors on the one hand,

and on the absolute nature of space on the other, started to become familiar in Venice. And

the hypothesis of those who claim that the young painter may have come into contact with and

appreciated the revolutionary discoveries that were coming out of England appears highly

credible.

In the meanwhile, the collaboration between Canaletto and McSwiney was coming to an end. In

1730 the impresario was already complaining to the Duke of Richmond that the painter was late

in delivering two more paintings on copper ordered by the illustrious client. This negligence

on the part of Canaletto may have been the consequence of his new relationship with the

intermediary who was going to launch his career in a definitive manner, Joseph Smith. Banker,

merchant, and a man of considerable culture and broad interests, Smith was a collector of the

highest caliber. In addition, he provided a point of reference, in part through his role as

British consul in Venice ( a post that he held uninterruptedly from 1744 until his death ),

for the English aristocracy that came to the city on the Grand Tour or for reasons of

business.

Smith and Canaletto quickly formed a close relationship, and it was through the former that

the painter obtained the majority of his profitable commissions from British clients.

Canaletto also painted numerous pictures for Smith himself: when the consul sold his own art

collection to George III of England in 1762, fifty paintings by the Venetian master arrived at

Windsor, together with over a hundred and fifty drawings.

The first canvases he painted for Smith were six fairly large views of St. Mark's Square and

the surrounding area. On the basis of details of topography, these can be dated to between

1726 and 1728, that is to say around the same time as the execution of the two paintings on

copper for the Duke of Richmond. In comparison with these, the canvases now in Windsor are

closer to his juvenile style in their brownish tones and dense brushworks, together with a

feeling interest in figures of a large size. The works that followed immediately afterwords,

though, were completely different. Canaletto started to paint a Venice flooded with sunlight:

an animated, luminous city, whose details were depicted with great care. This change is

evident not only in the twelve of Smith's canvases now in Windsor that can be daed to 1730 or

before, but also in the vedute of Piazza S. Marco with the Clock Tower in Kansas City, the

Entrance to the Grand Canal in Houston, and the Piazza S. Marco with Basilica in Cambridge.

In any case Canaletto's vedute cannot be described as " photographic " : the painter used

several different points of view in a single work, adjusting reality to suit his own needs

and his own poetics. Marchesini's comment ( " he paints on the spot and not from imagination

at home as does Ser Lucca " ) was not only unfair to Carlevarjs, for the claim was untrue, but

milseading if it gives us the idea that Antonio used to take his canvases, easel, paints, and

all the rest to the chosen location and paint there what he saw. What the artist did in fact

was make sketches on the spot --- with the aid of camera obscura --- and then paint his

pictures from these in the studio.





・・・ This short essay should be dedicated to " T. N. " with my ...

The Early Style of Canaletto vol. 3

The reasons for his popularity with his contemporaries become apparent if we read the

letters that were exchanged in 1725-26 between the painter Alessandro Marchesini, a native of

Verona but resident in Venice, and the merchant and collector Stefano Conti of Lucca. The

latter had asked Marchesini --- who combined his work as a painter of historical and religious

pictures with the role of an intermediary between his colleagues and collectors --- to procure

for him two vedute of Venice, to go with the three by Carlevarijs that he already owned. In

response to this request; Marchesini informed him that " Ser Lucca ... is old mow " and that

his palace had been taken by " Sig.r Ant. Canale, who universally astounds everyone in this

town that sees his works, which are of the character of Carlevari but in them one sees Light

inside the Sun." Thus Marchesini was pointing out the thematic cintinuity of Canaletto's

paintings with those of Carlevarijs, but at the same time showing that he understood Antonio's

desire to give the maximum of luminosity to his vedute. That Marchesini's enthusiasm made an

impression on the collector is proved by the fact that Conti purchased from Canaletto ---

notwithstanding the difficulties that arose from the painter's already numerous commitments

and the high price of the works --- not two but four vedute.

The canvases acquired by Conti are now in the collection of the Hosmer heirs in Montreal.

The preparatory drawing for one of them, depicting the Rialto Bridge, the first to have been

painted, still exists and is in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. This drawing made from life

( it was not for nothing that Marchesini had written to Conti that Canaletto " always goes to

the place, and fashions everything from life " ） is of great interest, as it shows the

attention that the painter paid to the representation of light, underlined by the word

" sun " written in ink in the part of the veduta where the incidence of light was strongest

and most dazzling. This brightness was transferred faithfully from the drawing to the

painting, further proof of Canaletto's interest in the realistic rendering of natural light.

However the paintings for Stefano Conti, characterized by their free and dense brushwork,

had not yet achieved the peaks if luminosity that were to connote Canaletto's vedute in the

late 20s. Rather they show a marked contrast of chiaroscuro between shaded and sunlit areas,

a legacy of the influence of Ricci which is a feature of Antonio's early works.

The next and, one is inclined to say, definitive step came immediately after he had finished

the work for Conti, when Canaletto came into contact with the Irish man Owen McSwiney, a

failed theatrical impresario who had been forced to leave England. At first McSwiney convinced

Canaletto to collaborate --- together with Pittoni, Cimaroli, and Piazzetta --- on the

execution of two Allegorical Tombs that were to be part of a series of imaginary monuments

dedicated to illustrious figures in the history of late 17th century Britain, entrusted to the

most celeblated artists of the Bolognese and Venetian shcools. At the same time, however, he

persuaded him to produce two small vedute on copper for the Duke of Richmond, who had also

been the client for the Tombs.

The Early Style of Canaletto vol. 2

In fact the scenic layout and dense, glowing tones of color that appear in these paintings

are a clear testimony to the effect that Ricci's work had on the young artist. The influence

of the painter from Belluno is also apparent in Cnaletto's very first vedute of Venice, the

four large canvases that were owned by the prince of Liechtenstein in Vienna at the end of the

18th century and are now split equally between the Thyssen collection in Madrid and the

Venetian Museo del Settecento in Ca'Rezzonico. It is highly likely that the four vedute were

not painted at the same time, but in groups of two at different moments, several years apart.

In fact in the Gran Canal: looking East from the Campo S. Vio in the Thyssen collection we can

see the scaffolding that was mounted on the dome of the church of La Salute in September 1719

in order for consolidation work to be carried out, while the Piazza S. Marco: looking East

along the Central Line in the same collection shows the area at a time when the new paving

designed by Andrea Tirali was being laid, in the state in which, according to the records, it

must have been in 1724.

Above all, however, the four paintings are not perfectly homogeneous from the stylistic

point of view, and it seems that it is possible to use them to trace the development of the

early phase of Canaletto's style. In the Grand Canal: looking Northeast from Palazzo Balbi

toward the Rialto Bridge in Ca'Rezzonico, the brownish tones typical of Ricci's paintings are

clearly visible. the figure are small and fairly imprecise, but caught in extremely lively

positions. In addition, Canaletto makes use here of an escamotage that probably derives from

the tradition of set design, using two different sources of light in the foreground so that

the shadows of both Palazzo Balbi, on the left bank, and those of the houses of the Mocenigo,

on the right bank, are cast onto the waters of the Grand Canal. The veduta of the Rio dei

Mendicanti in the same Venetian museum, on the other hand, is far more luminous and brighter

in its coloring. The figures are noticeably larger in proportion to the buildings and each of

them is depicted with precision and in rich detail.

It appears, therefore, that in the brief space of two or three years that sepatrates the

execution of these two pairs of paintings, Canaletto's style underwent a distinct

modification, moving in the direction of a better relationship with reality. On the other

hand, it seems possible to discern in the Rio dei Mendicanti and the contemporary Piazza S.

Marco the first glimmerings of the research that was to lead the painter, over the course of

the second half of the 1720s, to that " conquest of light " that was to characterize his

subsequent production. And, significantly, this took place at the same time as that other

great protagonist of Venetian painting in the 18th century. Giambattista Tiepolo was

developing his style. From roughly the time when he executed the frescoes in Palazzo Sandi

( 1725 ), Tiepolo progressively abandoned the gloomy tones of the tradition of Piazzetta and

Bencovich and started to produce paintings of ever greater luminosity, this time taking the

works of the 16th century Paolo Veronese as his model.

Canaletto's success in Venice must have been immediate, as his pictures soon began to

supplant those of the established Carkevarijs on the shopping lists of collectors. Moschini

states that Luca died of a broken heart when he saw that he had been surpassed by this new

star of Venetian veduta painting. And while this is not in fact true, the comment does offer a

convincing confirmation of the rapid rise of the young artist.