Marking the third centenary of the birth of Francesco Guardi (1712 – 2012),

Fondazione dei Musei Civici di Venezia is dedicating a broad retrospective exhibition to highlight the lengthy and complex artistic production of one of the last great masters of Venetian painting. It includes a significant number of loans that have never been on display before and with some works that are on display together for the first time.

Curated by Alberto Craievich and Filippo Pedrocco, under the scientific direction of Gabriella Belli, the exhibition – under the High Patronage of the President of the Italian Republic – is mounted in the exhibition rooms of the Correr Museum from 28 September 2012 to 6 January 2013. It is divided into five different sections that cover Francesco’s artistic development whilst also documenting the different genres he worked on.

The itinerary is both chronological and thematic, comprising seventy paintings and the same number of drawings that were chosen on the basis of their qualitative and historical value. They are part of a much vaster and heterogeneous corpus that ranges from lesser known early figures, inspired by costume painting, religious paintings and early views, landscapes and capriccios, in which his originality compared to other Venetian painters stands out with his immortalisation of Venetian celebrations and ceremonies, up to the splendid views of Venice during his later works in which his highly personal style became increasingly free and allusive.

Produced by Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia together with 24 ORE cultura – Gruppo 24 ORE and the support of Fondazione Antonveneta, and the participation of Fondazione Ermitage Italia and the Provincia Autonoma di Trento, the exhibition was made possible thanks to the generous financial support of the most important Italian and foreign museums including the Bergamo Carrara Accademia, the Berlin Gemäldegalerie, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Lisbon Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the London National Gallery, the Madrid Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, the Brera Pinacoteca, the Milan Poldi Pezzoli Museum, the Munich Alte Pinakothek, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Paris Louvre, the Saint Petersburg Hermitage, the Venice Gallerie dell’Accademia and the Washington National Gallery.

The exhibition can boast a scientific committee formed of the leading international scholars of 18th-century Venetian painting while the catalogue, published by Skira, was edited by Alberto Craievich and Filippo Pedrocco.