# Gondola in the Lagoon [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [GUARDI, Francesco]() - Date: 1751-1800 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 31 x 42 cm ## Commentary Gondola in the Lagoon c. 1765 Oil on canvas, 31 x 42 cm Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan Francesco Guardi was a collaborator of Gianantonio, from whom he learned the craft of painting, but he introduced into his older brothers art his own profoundly meditative personality. This fact is evinced by the essential differences to be discerned in the works the "workshop" produced. This picture, unanimously attributed by researchers to Francesco, is, in all likelihood, the fragment of a larger composition. The whole scene is summarized in the slow and calm movement of the gondoliere in the foreground, whereas the scenery of the lagoon virtually disintegrates in the mother-of-pearl atmosphere, which is lightened here and there by some rare flashes in the background. The lonely gondola is seen in the lagoon at the Fondamente Nuove, in front of the islands of San Cristoforo and San Michele. The emotional intensity of the painting is condensed into this brief recording of the moment, as if it were a "phrase in music", for example in Vivaldi's or Albinoni's compositions of the same theme. The smooth lagoon and the "adagio continuo" are parallel motifs of picture and music. The scenery becomes dissolved in musicality, as musicality disintegrates "in sorrowful weeping" \(Goethe\). The mournful character of the black gondola is both a forecast and a conscious experience of the future destiny of the world of lagoons — a world enclosed within its own modest boundaries. This is a world which has disappeared, because it was linked to a declining civilization. The argument was not continued, and it has not been taken up again; the other lagoon painters, such as the members of the Burano school, could not disguise the emptiness — not only of form but also of content. <P> <TABLE ALIGN=LEFT CELLPADDING=5 BORDER=1 WIDTH=320 BGCOLOR="\#99CCCC"> <TR VALIGN=MIDDLE><TD><IMG SRC="/support/gif/listen.gif" BORDER=0 VALIGN=MIDDLE> Suggested listening \(streaming mp3, 10 minutes\):<BR><A HREF="\#" onClick="w=window.open \('/music1/18\_cent/vivaldi\_recorder\_concerto.html', 'newWin', 'scrollbars=yes,status=no,dependent=yes,screenX=0,screenY=0,width=350,height=350'\);w.opener=this;w.focus\(\);return true"><B>Antonio Vivaldi: Concerto for recorder in A minor</B></A> </TD></TR></TABLE> ## Related artworks - [An Architectural Caprice]() - [Audience Granted by the Doge]() - [Bacino di San Marco with San Giorgio and the Giudecca]() - [Bridge at Dolo]() - [Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo]() - [Canal Grande with Santa Lucia and the Scalzi Church]() - [Capriccio with Venetian Motifs]() - [Carnival Thursday on the Piazzetta]() - [Church of Santa Maria Zobenigo]() - [Doge Alvise IV Mocenigo Appears to the People in St Mark's Basilica in 1763]() - [Fire in the Oil Depot at San Marcuola]() - [Fire in the San Marcuola Oil Depot]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()