Master of the Langmatt Foundation Views, often identified as Apollonio Domenichini

This well-preserved and generously sized view of Venice by the painter sometimes identified as Apollonio Domenichini – but more commonly known as the Master of the Langmatt Foundation Views – shows the entrance to Grand Canal looking west. This painting shows Baldassare Longhena's baroque church Santa Maria della Salute, prominently sited on the left and rendered with a great attention to its various architectural details.

The work is typical of the Langmatt Master's particular sensitivity to capturing textures of stone, plaster and water, executed with a particular nervousness of the brush. Compositionally, the slightly lower viewpoint also diverges from Canaletto's own approaches to this particular area of the Grand Canal, of which no less than three versions are known.¹

Another smaller version of this particular view, attributed to the Langmatt Master, was sold at auction in 2015 as one of a pair of canvases.²

Charles Beddington has endorsed the attribution of this painting to the artist known as the Master of the Langmatt Foundation Views following first-hand inspection.

¹ W.G. Constable, Canaletto: Giovanni Antonio Canal, 1697–1768, J.G. Links (ed.), Oxford 1976, vol. 2, nos 165–67.

² Bonhams, London, 8 July 2015, lot 26.