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nobility, brought to his views «k Venice a rather less detailed and a much' more poetic vision than that of Canaletto. That is not to say that his Venetian paintings became poetic statements at the cost of the recognition of the specific views he painted, for the subjects of most of his canvases may be identified even today, just as in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ painting of the Piazza San Marco, which was then, as it is today, the center of Venice’s business activity. In fact, if the costumes were changed and the market stalls were removed f om the base of the Campanile this view would be identical to that seen by the present day traveler.
But Guardi’s pleasure in the quality of the Venetian light, so luminous and so different from that of any other city because of its continuous reflection from so many watery surfacees, and the energetic animation with which he invested his canvases have raised this view fron the topographical or the merely representational to a level of the greatest mastery. Indeed, some critics boldly declare him a forerunner of the Impressionists, although in many senses he was more subtle than they, since he created his .most sparkling effects with a ’ limited palette of white, gra^s, blues, ochres and black in contrast to the Impressionists’ use of far more brilliant pigment.
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