ANTONIO STOM
Venice?, 1688 ca. – Venice, 1734
Caprice from the lagoon of Venice
oil on canvas, cm 59,7×99
This capriccio is a typical work by Antonio Stom, a highly versatile artist – he painted scenes from history, battles and landscapes – who worked principally in Venice in the early decades of the 18th century. Stom, who may be defined a “pre-Guardiesque painter”, has been portrayed for the first time in a study by Morassi in 1962 (A. Morassi, Preludio per Antonio Stom, detto “il Tonino”, in “Pantheon”, XX, 1962, pp. 291-306) and more recently by Filippo Pedrocco.
As it is often visible in the painter’s works, the scene unfolds in the proximity of a pond, on which buildings of the period and colossal classical ruins are reflected, following the fashion of the time – which anticipated the style of architectural capriccio that would be popularized by Piranesi in the following decades.
The scene is dominated by an arch on the right, viewed through an intuitive and effective perspective, seemingly inspired by the Arch of Titus in Rome, one of the most celebrated monuments of antiquity. Furthermore, the scene is animated by small figures, engaged in various activities – a pictorial feature characteristic of both Stom’s art and of this type of imaginary views.
In the catalogue entry produced for an exhibition of this work, the writer noted the “visionary character of this harbour”, with its “cold, grey-silver light” typical of the artist, as well as the pictorial freedom that distinguishes it from the precise attention to detail of certain vedutist painters.
The painting was recently published by Giancarlo Sestieri.
Publications:
“Vedute di Venezia e capricci lagunari del XVIII e XIX secolo”, exhibition catalogue edited by Marzia Moschetta, Galleria Lampronti Lebole, Milan, 2004, pp. 14-15.
“Il capriccio architettonico in Italia nel XVII e XVIII secolo”, edited by Giancarlo Sestieri, Etgraphiae, Foligno, 2015, vol. III, p. 284, fig. 3.