GASPARE DIZIANI Lot n° 72

(Belluno, 1689 - Venice, 1767) Sketch depicting merchants Oil on canvas applied to panel, 20.3X36.7 cm. Of fine quality and preservation, the canvas is a sketch in which the author places a genre scene in small scale, likely intended to compose complementary pieces of a larger work. The characters of style, chromatic exuberance and vividness of the drafts is as indebted as ever to the creations of Sebastiano Ricci, but typical is the pictorial conduct of Gaspare Diziani, who, a pupil of Gregorio Lazzarini and later of his fellow Sebastiano, would gain notoriety by initially producing theatrical sets and later elegant compositions of a historical and mythological nature. Active from 1717 at the court of Augustus III of Saxony in Dresden and Munich, Diziani returned to his homeland in 1720 and worked throughout the Veneto and particularly in Padua and Belluno. He also stopped in Rome, Bergamo, and Trento, tackling all pictorial themes, from landscape to historical portraiture and religious painting. In 1766, he was elected to the presidency of the Accademia di Pittura in Venice, but could not complete his term because he died suddenly on August 17, 1767. Returning to the canvas under consideration, it has illustrative affinities with a drawing that was exhibited at Sotheby's in London on April 30, 1990, lot 95 (fig. 1). Reference bibliography: R. Pallucchini, Gaspare Diziani, in La pittura nel veneto. Il Settecento, Milan 1996, II, pp. 86, 104