In yesterday's post, we explored what fashion designers and students might learn from an exhibition on a modern architect and interior designer. But valuable lessons also emerge from 18th-century painting. The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, for instance, is showcasing works by the Italian painter Francesco Guardi (on view until May 11th), drawn from the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum's collection.
Born into a family of painters, Francesco Guardi (1712-1793) trained in the family workshop under his older brother, Gianantonio. Until the late 1750s, his work spanned historical and religious subjects, frescoes, and still lifes. However, his mature career was defined by vedute, urban views of Venice, following in the footsteps of Canaletto (1697-1768). Over time, and particularly after Canaletto's death, Guardi infused his compositions with a more dynamic brushstroke and an increasingly idealized vision, establishing himself as the leading vedutista of his time.
Yet, unlike Canaletto, who pursued precision and clarity, Guardi embraced a more subjective and atmospheric approach. His Venice is not rendered with meticulous accuracy and architectural correctness, but rather reimagined as an ethereal, almost dreamlike city, his urban views are indeed turned into poetic, evocative visions.
The exhibition is displayed across three rooms of the permanent collection and is divided into two sections: "The City and its Festivals" and "Terraferma and the Capricci." The selected works, dating from 1765 to 1791, depict iconic Venetian locations, grand festivals such as the Ascension, the city's surrounding landscapes, and fantastical capricci from the artist's late career.
The exhibition opens with a series of paintings that serve as a visual chronicle of Venice's celebrations, revealing Guardi's early stylistic ties to Canaletto. Among them, The Feast of Ascension in the Piazza San Marco (c. 1775) captures one of the city's most important annual festivities. Guardi animates the Piazza with bustling figures, rendered in swift, impastoed brushstrokes that interplay with light and shadow beneath a delicately nuanced sky.
Another testament to his skill in depicting official ceremonies is The Departure of the Bucintoro (c. 1765–80). This sweeping composition presents the Venetian dock lined with its most significant buildings, while the Doge's ceremonial galley, the Bucintoro, adorned with its red and gold standard, glides through the waters, a striking focal point in Guardi's grand yet atmospheric vision of the city's spectacle.
Regatta on the Grand Canal (c. 1775) and The Rialto Bridge after the Design by Palladio (c. 1770) both focus on the Grand Canal but from contrasting perspectives. The former captures the city in the midst of yet another grand festival, while the latter reimagines Palladio's unrealized vision for the Rialto Bridge, blending architectural fantasy with artistic interpretation.
The second section, "Terraferma and the Capricci," highlights how Guardi's fluid, expressive technique allowed him to break away from academic conventions. In the first part of this section his focus shifts to decaying buildings and modest scenes from Venice's hinterland, moving beyond the opulence typically associated with Venetian views; the second part looks instead more at the capricci.
By the late 17th century and throughout the 18th, European tourism flourished. Wealthy nobles and bourgeois, particularly from England and France, traveled to Italy to refine their education, collect artworks, and acquire antiques. This cultural phenomenon fueled a new art market with Grand Tour travelers seeking painted souvenirs, whether precise city views or imaginative capricci enriched with architectural ruins, essential motifs in Italian paintings of the time.
Architectural capricci where particularly fashionable: the term capriccio (Italian for "folly," "whim" or "fantasy") reflects a playful, inventive approach rather than strict realism. These imaginative compositions blended real and fictional elements into an idealized scene and juxtaposed architectural elements from different periods, such as classical ruins alongside contemporary buildings, for example, enhanced by dramatic lighting, vast perspectives, and atmospheric effects.
Guardi's capricci are painterly and dynamic, with flickering light and expressive brushstrokes that evoke movement and nostalgia. He merged real Venetian landmarks with imagined elements, creating dreamlike urban landscapes populated by small, indistinct figures that emphasize scale and vitality. Unlike Piranesi's structured fantasies, Guardi's capricci are more atmospheric and impressionistic, capturing emotion over architectural precision.
Even in his most realistic cityscapes, Guardi infuses elements of fantasy, lending his vedute a soft, enigmatic allure through shifting colors, atmospheric effects, and haunting silences. His imaginary landscapes and capricci blur the line between reality and dream, foreshadowing Surrealism. At times, spectral visions rise from the lagoon, these are indeed capricci lagunari (lagoon capricci), dreamlike visions steeped in profound melancholy, decay, and dilapidation, solitude, emptiness and silence.
In Capriccio (c. 1770-80), two fishermen and a dog appear against a ruinous backdrop. A preparatory drawing, Capriccio with Ruined Roman Arch and a Circular Temple (c. 1770-80), displayed alongside, reveals subtle compositional differences.
The exhibition concludes with Regatta on the Grand Canal Near the Rialto Bridge (c. 1791) by Giacomo Guardi and The Bucintoro (c. 1745-50) by Canaletto. However, it is the capricci that may hold the greatest inspiration for fashion and set designers. These imaginative compositions, blending architectural styles from different periods, offer a compelling parallel to contemporary design practices.
Beyond their potential as prints, capricci can serve as a foundation for innovative garments that merge historical elements into a new, harmonious whole. Just as Guardi reinterpreted architectural forms with artistic freedom, and his capricci combined real and imagined architectural elements, modern designers often layer and blend references across eras, remixing historical references, cultural motifs, and disparate aesthetics to create something entirely new, constructing fashion that is both whimsical and sophisticated. In an industry where hybridization is key, embracing a capriccio approach opens endless possibilities for reinvention, so try doing it moving from one of Guardi's capricci, replicating his atmospheres through textures that mimic his soft dissolution of forms, and through colors that capture the luminous haze of his brushwork, reimagining in this way fashion through a lens of artistic and architectural illusion.
Image credits for this post
Francesco Guardi
The Feast of Ascension in the Piazza San Marco, ca. 1775
Oil on canvas. 61 x 91 cm. Lisboa, Museo Calouste Gulbenkian
Francesco Guardi
The Departure of the Bucintoro, ca. 1765-1780
Oil on canvas. 61 x 92 cm. Lisboa, Museo Calouste Gulbenkian
Francesco Guardi
The Portico of the Ducal Palace, ca. 1778
Oil on panel. 24 x 17 cm. Lisboa, Museo Calouste Gulbenkian
Francesco Guardi
The Rialto Bridge after the Design by Palladio, ca. 1770
Oil on canvas. 61 x 92 cm. Lisboa, Museo Calouste Gulbenkian
Francesco Guardi
Architectural Capriccio, ca. 1770-1780
Oil on panel. 19 x 15 cm. Lisboa, Museo Calouste Gulbenkian
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