Lot 2340 Dα

The Venetian veduta painters of the 18th century were already aware of the picturesque effects revealed in the city at night. As was Frederick Nerly, who settled in Venice in 1837 after a long stay in Rome and lived there until his death. He painted the churches of San Giorgio Maggiore and Santa Maria della Salute, the Bridge of Sighs and the Grand Canal; but there was no other motif that he depicted as frequently as the Piazzetta at night. He painted it from different perspectives and in different formats. In large landscape-format paintings, he painted the Doge's Palace to the left with a view of the Bacino di San Marco (ill. 1), in medium-sized portrait-format paintings, he placed one of the two columns, crowned by St. Mark's Lion and St. Theodore, the city's patron saints, in the centre of the image.
In the present painting, it is the column with the lion of St Mark that rises up as a solitary motif. The moon is placed directly behind the symbol of the Evangelist, so that the column is bathed in deep black against the light and casts a long dark shadow in the direction of the viewer. The striking silhouette of St. Mark's Lion with its curved wings soaring into the air is thus effectively revealed: "[St. Mark's Lion] appears as if surrounded and enlivened by an aura of light. The rigid monument [...] is transformed, as it were, back into the original demonic being." (Andrea Wandschneider: Die Verstörung des romantischen Blicks. Zur Bildkonzeption Friedrich Nerlys. In: Römische Tage – Venezianische Nächte. Friedrich Nerly zum 200. Geburtstag, exhib. cat. Dessau 2007, p. 43).