JACOPO FABRIS (ITALIAN CIRCA 1689-1761)VIEW OF THE GRAND CANAL WITH THE FONDACO DEI TURCHIOil on canvas56.5 x 82.5cm (22 x 32?in.)Painted circa 1740-1750Provenance:Howard, Davies Street, LondonFrom whom acquired in 1973 by a private collectorDr Dario Succi has confirmed the attribution to Jacopo Fabris and will include this painting in his forthcoming book on Venetian view painters.Jacopo Fabris was born in Venice but left the city circa 1719, working as a theatre painter and painter of city views and capricci in the courts of Germany before settling in Copenhagen as a Court painter in the 1740s. He continued to paint views of his native city. This work is derived from an engraving titled Il Fondaco dei Turchi, pl. 15 from the series Il Gran Teatro di Venezia, published by Domenico Lovisa (1690-1750) in 1720 and reprinted several times during the eighteenth century.The Veneto-Gothic Fondaco dei Turchi, west of the Rialto on the Grand Canal, was constructed in the first half of the thirteenth century by Giacomo Palmier, an exile from Pesaro. The Venetian Republic purchased it in 1381 for Niccolò II d'Este, Marquess of Ferrara. During its early history the building accommodated many visiting dignitaries. From the early seventeenth century until 1838 the palazzo was the combined residence, warehouse and marketplace for the Ottoman Turks in Venice. As with the Grand Canal's Fondaco dei Tedeschi, which housed German merchants, corralling foreigners in a single location enabled the Republic's highly efficient secret police to keep an eye on them. Fabris's painting is a useful record of the way that the Fondaco dei Turchi looked before being rebuilt in an aggrandized and romanticized Veneto Gothic style after 1860. Today it houses the city's Natural History Museum.To the left of the Fondaco dei Turchi is the austere, thirteenth century Fondaco del Megio, used to store grain and millet, with the lion of St Mark on the upper storey. Further left is Baldassare Longhena's elegant, baroque Palazzo Belloni-Battagia, built 1647-63 for the ambitious, newly ennobled Girolamo Belloni: it almost bankrupted him. Jacopo Fabris was born in Venice circa 1689 to parents of German origin. He specialized in views of Venice, Rome and other cities, as well as architectural capricci. Fabris, like his contemporary Canaletto, was also active as a theatre painter. He visited Rome in his early years but from 1719-21 was a Court Painter for Margrave Carl William of Baden-Durlach in Karlsruhe. From 1724-8 he worked at the Opera House in Hamburg and then for Frederick the Great in Berlin, painting decorations for Georg von Knobelsdorff's new opera house on the Unter den Linden.In 1742 Fabris moved to Copenhagen. He worked for the hedonistic King Frederick V, under whose reign the arts flourished. Fabris designed theatre sets, painted capricci with romantic ruins and taught architecture and perspective at the new Academy of Art in Charlottenborg. He decorated the garden hall at Fredensborg Palace with ideal landscapes (1750-51), working also at Frederiksborg Castle and Bregentved. Fabris's theories were published as Information on Lessons in Geometry, Perspective and Architecture (1759). He was granted a Royal Pension and died in Copenhagen in 1761. His widow, the Englishwoman Susanna Jeffreys (c.1703-1786) continued to receive a substantial annuity from the King.
Oil on canvas

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