Canaletto and the Moon: Part 2 — Festa del Redentore
This is Part 2 in a series of articles examining paintings by Canaletto that depict the moon at night. Can we use lunar position and phase to help date them?
Today is the third Sunday in July. In Venice it marks the Festa del Redentore, the Feast of the Holy Redeemer, instituted to give thanks for the end of a plague that killed tens of thousands in 1576.
The evening before is celebrated with fireworks over the Giudecca canal, observed from a temporary floating bridge that connects the Zattere to Giudecca itself, directly before the steps of Palladio’s 1592 Chiesa del Santissimo Redentore.
Even in this year of pandemic, 2020, the bridge has been constructed as usual, and while the fireworks have been cancelled to limit crowding, Venetians have crossed the canal wearing their masks (Venezia, il Redentore senza fuochi).
The Festa has been celebrated in painting many times over the centuries, notably by Joseph Heintz in 1650 (Correr, Venice) and Gabriel Bella (Querini Stampalia).
Canaletto and the Redentore
Notable by his absence in the short list above is Antonio Canal. Surely, he would have painted this famous festival at some stage in his long career? While he drew and painted the church several times[i], there is no known painting of the Festa del Redentore itself.
In his book titled “Further Adventures of the Celestial Sleuth” [ii], Donald Olson sets out a theory that Canaletto painted a series of night festivals in the year 1757, based on the position and phase of the moon shown in the finished works. I looked at the argument for dating La Vigilia di San Pietro to 1757 in Part 1 of this series. I remain skeptical of it.
Olson goes on to suggest that the reason a painting of the Festa del Redentore does not exist is that in 1757 the festival coincided with a new moon, therefore providing insufficient light.
There’s a much simpler explanation than this: Canaletto didn’t paint it because he had not been commissioned to do so. The set of four paintings that includes Canaletto’s two night festival scenes was commissioned by German merchant Sigismund Streit. There is no evidence I’ve seen to suggest that a commission for the Festa del Redentore was ever made.
A sketch drawing and an engraving
Canaletto did, however, make a quick sketch of the Festa — or at least of the church and the temporary bridge across the Giudecca canal. The sketch appears to be the basis for one of a series of engravings, the Prospectuum aedium[iii], published in 1763 by Lodovico Furlanetto. Let’s look at the engraving first:
The church of the Redentore stands in the centre of the scene. To the left, a full moon hangs low in the sky. The caption indicates this is the celebration before the feast day proper. The moon serves to emphasize that these events are happening at night.
The engraving is by Giovanni Brustolon and was published in the period 1763–1766. At the bottom left it is inscribed “Antonius Canal pinxit” — Antonio Canal (Canaletto) painted it. This should not be taken literally[iv] — the term is used loosely in the sense of “depicts”[v].
While there is no known finished pen and ink drawing of this scene by Canaletto, as there are for other engravings in the series, there is a rough sketch:
Notably, the sketch does not show the moon. Likely an intermediate finished drawing was made, possibly by Canaletto, for the engraver to work from and has subsequently been lost.
A Lunar Capriccio
If you believe the presence of a moon in paintings can be used to help date them, as with Canaletto’s San Pietro and Santa Marta night scenes, then why not in an engraving?
Unfortunately, it’s easy to show that this scene is indeed a ‘lunar capriccio’. Capriccio is a term applied to paintings and drawings that “combine real elements such as recognisable buildings or monuments with elements of fantasy or imagination”[vii]. In this case, the moon is shown in a position that could never in fact be observed.
The buildings shown in the engraving appear in part to be invented. The large open space to the left of the Redentore itself is not reflected in the Ughi 1729 map nor in other paintings of the subject by Canaletto. The buildings to the left appear too small relative to the church and appear only loosely based on the architecture shown in other contemporary depictions.
The building under the moon can tentatively be identified as the church of Santa Croce based on the low wall that is still visible there today. Certainly, the view to the left does not extend as far along the Giudecca as Le Zitelle (Chiesa di Santa Maria della Presentazione), which would be clearly recognisable.
The viewpoint of Canaletto’s sketch, and of the engraving, lies on the Zattere to the north — just west of where the pontoon bridge is still constructed today. Using those locations, the implied bearing to the full moon is around 149 degrees, i.e. south southwest:
In the engraving, the moon appears to be at an altitude of just under +2°. A full moon occupies ~0.5° and it sits around ‘four moons’ above the horizon. Using the “Visual Search” functionality in The Photographer’s Ephemeris iOS app, it’s easy to confirm that the moon never appears that far south and that low in the sky, in any phase, let alone when full [viii].
Artistic license is at work: this is the artist portraying the moon to fulfil a narrative function, making it clear to the viewer that this is a festival occurring at night. This device is arguably needed more in an engraving than in a painting, where the dark blues and blacks of a night sky can easily be shown.
Far from Canaletto not painting the Festa del Redentore because the moon wasn’t right, he did sketch the scene and an engraving including the moon was published which credits him as the artist. However, the moon does not reflect any scene that Canaletto could possibly have observed himself.
Since this is a ‘lunar capriccio’, can we still draw any firm conclusions about the dating of other contemporary Canaletto night scenes using the moon? In Part III, we’ll take a hard look at La Vigilia di Santa Marta, Canaletto’s remaining night folk festival painting.
[i] For example, this painting sold at Christies in 2000, another painting sold at Sotheby’s in 2018, and a drawing at Harvard College
[ii] Further Adventures of the Celestial Sleuth, Donald W. Olson, Springer International Publishing AG, 2018, pp. 84–89
[iii] William G. Constable, Canaletto. Giovanni Antonio Canal, 1697–1768, revised by Joseph G. Links (Oxford 1989), p.673, “Engravings by Brustoloni after Canaletto” III(c)
[iv] “Although inscribed Antonius Canal pinxit, the term pinxit should not be literally construed: the print in fact relates to a small drawing of circa 1756–1760 in one of Canaletto’s sketch-books (the Algarotti-Corniani–Viggiano album, sheet 11). No intermediary draughtsman is named on the print.” Brustolon, Prospectuum aedium…, Robin Halwas Limited, p. 8
[v] For other engravings by Brustolon, e.g. The Doge giving thanks for his election in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, the engraving shows “Antonius Canal pinxit”, but the source used by the engraver is a pen and ink drawing now in the British Museum, rather than a painting.
[vi] Canaletto 1697–1768, Bozena Anna Kowalczyk, Rome 2018, p. 191
[vii] See “The Capriccio”, Royal Collection Trust website
[viii] For the search, the following parameters were used: azimuth range: ±5°, altitude: ±2°. Checked from April 1757 through 1763. Results were also crossed-checked and confirmed using the Sun Surveyor app.
