Carlevaris Paintings
1663 - 1730 Italian Painter
The Bridge for the Feast of the Madonna della Salute, 1720
Oil on canvas, 117 x 148 cm
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford City Landscapes
A wooden boat-bridge stretches across the entire width of the scene, from Palazzo Gritti on the left towards the church of Santa Maria della Salute, which is not actually shown. The façade on the right, behind the Punta della Dogana, is that of Andrea Palladio's San Giorgio Maggiore. In the foreground we see a small group of people in a gondola; other figures are depicted on the bridge. Behind the bridge, on the Bacino di San Marco, are sailboats, gondolas and rowboats. The buildings on the Riva degli Schiavoni enclose the scene.
The composition is distinguished by the strong vertical accent created by the buildings on the left, which rise to the full height of the image, and by the horizontal line of the bridge. The bridge is not shown in its entirety, and must have been about twice as long in reality; wooden structures of this kind were normally elevated in the middle, as we can see on the right, to allow boats to pass underneath.
In July 1630 Venice was struck by another devastating plague. Doge Nicolo Contarini and the Senate decided to invoke the Virgin's intercession, vowing to build a church if their prayers were heeded. The church would be consecrated to the Madonna della Salute the word 'salute' meaning both 'health' and 'salvation' and it would be the focus of an annual procession.
When the epidemic subsided in November 1631, construction of the church began and the first procession took place. To enable the faithful to cross the Grand Canal on foot, a floating bridge is built every year on about 21 November, the Feast of the Purification.
By comparison to other paintings of the subject concentrating on the massive procession to the Redentore, Carlevaris included a much smaller number of figures, shown crossing the bridge to the Salute either alone or in small groups. Most of the people on the bridge are returning to the city, and the gondola in the foreground is moving in that direction as well. Instead of the ceremonial journey it is the wooden bridge, an ephemeral topographical detail in the Venetian cityscape, that is the true focus of the composition.
Carlevaris' s painting marks a new phase in the representation of historical and festive events. In contrast to his predecessors the master emphasized neither the procession nor its goal, but rather the cityscape itself, in which the figures play a subordinate role.
