''The Stonemason's Yard'' (formally known as ''Campo S. Vidal and Santa Maria della Carità'') is an early

oil painting Oil painting is a painting method involving the procedure of painting with pigments combined with a drying oil as the Binder (material), binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on canvas, wood panel, or oil on coppe ...

by Giovanni Antonio Canal, better known as

Canaletto Giovanni Antonio Canal (18 October 1697 – 19 April 1768), commonly known as Canaletto (), was an Italian painter from the Republic of Venice, considered an important member of the 18th-century Venetian school. Painter of cityscapes or ...

. It depicts an informal scene in

Venice Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ...

, looking over a temporary stonemason's yard in the Campo San Vidal set up for the construction of Andrea Tirali's facade of the church of San Vidal, and across the Grand Canal towards the church of Santa Maria della Carità. Painted in the mid to late 1720s, it is now in the collection of the

National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of more than 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current di ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

and is considered one of Canaletto's finest works.Canaletto, ''The Stonemason's Yard''

National Gallery, London The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of more than 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current dire ...

Description

The painting measures . It depicts a Venetian scene looking roughly southwest over a temporary stonemason's yard situated in an open space beside the Grand Canal known as the Campo San Vidal ("campo", literally field, used in Venice to denote a small open space). Several masons are at work shaping and carving stone probably destined for the reconstruction of the nearby church of San Vidal (immediately behind the viewer and so not visible in the painting; its

Palladian Palladian architecture is a European architectural style derived from the work of the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580). What is today recognised as Palladian architecture evolved from his concepts of symmetry, perspective and ...

façade was renovated in the 1730s) or possibly for the embellishment of a nearby

palazzo A palace is a large residence, often serving as a royal residence or the home for a head of state or another high-ranking dignitary, such as a bishop or archbishop. The word is derived from the Latin name palātium, for Palatine Hill in Rome whi ...

(the Palazzo Cavalli-Franchetti and Palazzo Barbaro are close by, to the viewer's left). The side of the medieval church of Santa Maria della Carità, reconstructed in the 1440s, stands on the opposite bank of the Grand Canal, to the left of the façade of the Scuola Grande della Carità; the tower of the church of San Trovaso is visible rising over the rooftops in the distance. In addition to the architectural details, ''The Stonemason's Yard'' shows scenes of daily life in Venice, probably in the early morning: a cock crows on a windowsill to the lower left, and sunlight streams in from the left behind the viewer (east). The mainly domestic buildings are generally in poor repair, with typical Venetian flared chimney-pots. Laundry hangs from many of the windows, and potted plants stand on several balconies. One woman is using a

distaff A distaff (, , also called a rock"Rock." ''The Oxford English Dictionary''. 2nd ed. 1989.) is a tool used in spinning. It is designed to hold the unspun fibers, keeping them untangled and thus easing the spinning process. It is most commonly use ...

and drop spindle to

spin Spin or spinning most often refers to: * Spin (physics) or particle spin, a fundamental property of elementary particles * Spin quantum number, a number which defines the value of a particle's spin * Spinning (textiles), the creation of yarn or thr ...

thread on a balcony to the right; another draws water from a well in the campo beside a wooden shed, from a well-head shaped like the

capital Capital and its variations may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** Capital region, a metropolitan region containing the capital ** List of national capitals * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Econom ...

of a column. Two children are playing in the foreground to the left: one is falling over and urinating involuntarily in surprise, as a woman lunges forward to catch him; another woman looks down from a balcony above. A

gondola The gondola (, ; , ) is a traditional, flat-bottomed Venetian rowing boat, well suited to the conditions of the Venetian lagoon. It is typically propelled by a gondolier, who uses a rowing oar, which is not fastened to the hull, in a scul ...

with canopied cabin passes on the canal, with others moored on either bank. Unsigned and undated, the painting is attributed and dated by stylistic clues. It seems to combine features of Canaletto's early and mature styles, for example in the use of two undercolours, and is a very early example the use of

Prussian blue Prussian blue (also known as Berlin blue, Brandenburg blue, Parisian and Paris blue) is a dark blue pigment produced by oxidation of ferrous ferrocyanide salts. It has the chemical formula . It consists of cations, where iron is in the oxidat ...

in oil painting. Canaletto painted ''The Stonemason's Yard'' before 1730 while Prussian blue was discovered by Johann Jacob Diesbach in 1704. Amongst other pigments used by Canaletto in this painting were

Naples yellow Naples yellow, also called antimony yellow or lead antimonate yellow, is an Inorganic compound, inorganic pigment that largely replaced lead-tin-yellow and has been used in European paintings since the seventeenth century. While the mineral orpim ...

lead white Lead white is a thick, opaque, and heavy white pigment composed primarily of basic lead carbonate, , with a crystalline molecular structure. It was the most widely produced and used white pigment in different parts of the world from antiquity unti ...

and

ochres Ochre ( ; , ), iron ochre, or ocher in American English, is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the col ...

. The informal scene is thought to have been painted for a Venetian patron, rather than a foreign visitor to Venice, in the mid- to late 1720s. Unlike many views painted by Canaletto and his fellow vedutisti, the location has changed significantly since the 1720s. The view of the opposite bank of the Grand Canal is now blocked by the high arch of the modern wooden Accademia bridge, and the church of the Carità has been much altered. The campanile fell down in 1744, demolishing the houses beside the canal in front, and much of the other stonework has been removed. The nave became the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia in the 1800s, and the

Gallerie dell'Accademia The Gallerie dell'Accademia is a museum gallery of pre-19th-century art in Venice, northern Italy. It is housed in the Scuola della Carità on the south bank of the Grand Canal, within the sestiere of Dorsoduro. It was originally the gallery o ...

is housed in the Scuola. The Campo remains an open space, with the well-head at its centre. The domestic building to the right remains standing.''The Stonemason's Yard'', Primary teachers' notes
National Gallery, London.

Provenance

The early ownership of ''The Stonemason's Yard'' is not known. It was in the collection of Sir George Beaumont by 1808, and was one of the paintings Beaumont donated to the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

in 1823, to form the nucleus of the

's nascent collection. It passed to the National Gallery in 1828, where it continues to be exhibited. It was extensively cleaned by John Seguier in 1852 – so extensively that a Select Committee investigated the cleaning practices of the National Gallery – and was cleaned again in 1955, and then restored, relined and remounted in 1989. Some early retouchings, clouds now concealed under later glazings, may have been done in Beaumont's time by

John Constable John Constable (; 11 June 1776 – 31 March 1837) was an English landscape painter in the Romanticism, Romantic tradition. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for revolutionising the genre of landscape painting with his pictures of Dedha ...

References

External links

*
Canaletto
', a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on ''The Stonemason's Yard'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Stonemason's Yard 1720s paintings Paintings in the National Gallery, London Paintings of Venice by Canaletto Paintings of Venice Churches in art

Description

Provenance

See also

References

External links