THE MASTER OF THE LANGMATT FOUNDATION VIEWS | Venice, the Piazza San Marco

Anonymous sale (‘The Property of a Lady’), London, Replica Shoes 's, 8 July 2004, lot 183, for £89,600;

There acquired by the father of the present owner;

Thence by inheritance.

This archetypal view of Venice by the painter sometimes identified as Apollonio Domenichini – but more commonly known as the Master of the Langmatt Foundation Views – shows San Marco, the city’s principal public square and its social, religious and political centre.

The series of views of Venice at the Langmatt Foundation, Baden, from which the artist's appellation derives, includes a painting of the same composition as this but of smaller dimensions, with differences in the disposition of figures in the foreground and in the sky.¹ The present work must have been painted before 1755, the date of the addition of the second attic storey to the Torre del Orologio, the famous clock tower in Piazza San Marco, visible at the end of the arcade on the left.

¹ Oil on canvas, 47 x 73 cm.; Mythos Venedig, Z. Häfeli and G. Borghero (eds), exh. cat., Baden 1994, p. 108, cat. no. 42, reproduced p. 109. Another version was sold London, Christie’s, 7 July 2000, lot 82, as one of a pair.