Antique Venetian Canal Oil Painting, Signed, Attributed to Andrea Biondetti, Gilt Frame, c. 1900–1925

The Piece

A narrow Venetian canal seen straight down its length, with a gondolier working his boat toward you through still water. The left bank falls into shadow: a tall palazzo in worn rose brick and grey stucco, its ground floor arches dark at the waterline. The right bank takes the sun, with a broad cream facade, tall round headed windows and blue shutters, then a run of lower houses stepping away under green and blue awnings, and a mass of garden foliage leaning out over the water from behind a wall.

The canal is the best passage in the picture. Mooring poles striped blue and white stand in ranks along both banks, and their reflections break into short vertical strokes on the water. Two moored boats rest under the left wall, one beneath a cream canopy, and the gondolier stands aft in a dark red jacket and black hat, oar in the water. At the far end the buildings soften into pale sky and haze. The painting is in oil, with the foliage built from separate loaded touches and light paint flicked onto the water and the sunlit stone.

It sits in its original gilt composition frame over wood, with a ribbon and stave band on the outer face and a bead and reel at the sight edge, the gilding warm and rubbed back to the ochre bole along the high points.

History & Provenance

The painting is signed in dark paint at the lower left, reading "A. Biond…". The signature is consistent with Andrea Biondetti (1851–1946), a Venetian view painter who signed "A. Biondetti", usually at the lower left, and whose small canal views of the city were sold to visitors in the early twentieth century. The name fragment, the subject and the size all fit his work. Most recorded Biondetti pictures are watercolours, and this one is in oil, so it is offered as attributed to Andrea Biondetti.

On the reverse is a gold embossed retailer's label reading A. GENOVA · VENICE · FINE ARTS, showing a seated figure of Venice beside the winged lion of Saint Mark with the Piazzetta behind her. The English wording suggests a shop that sold to English speaking visitors. A small round white paper seal survives at the upper left, its device no longer legible. The pulpboard backing, sealed with wide gummed paper tape over small hand driven nails, and the compo gilt moulding point to a date of about 1900–1925, which sits comfortably with Biondetti's dated work of the 1920s.

Andrea Biondetti artist page

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

A canal running straight away from you, walls closing in on either side and the far end dissolving into haze: on a wall it reads as a passage, opening the room rather than sitting on it. The palette of cream, rose brick, grey green water and blue mooring poles, with one note of dark red on the gondolier, sits easily against white plaster, deep colour or panelling, and keeps company with brass, walnut and old mirror. At ten by fourteen and a half inches it is a close range picture, made for a hallway, a stair landing, a desk wall or a bedside, anywhere people pass within a few feet and can enjoy the brushwork. The original frame and its Venetian label come with it, the way it travelled home a century ago.

Hang it out of direct sun and away from heat sources and humidity. Dust the frame with a soft, dry brush, and leave any cleaning of the painted surface to a conservator.