Francesco Lazzaro Guardi (Italian pronunciation: [franˈtʃesko ˈgwardi]; 5 October 1712 – 1 January 1793) was an Italian painter, nobleman, and a member of the Venetian School. He is considered to be among the last practitioners, along with his brothers, of the classic Venetian school of painting.
Francesco Guardi lived in the XVIII cent., a remarkable figure of Italian Baroque. Find more works of this artist at Wikiart.org – best visual art database.
Francesco Guardi was, after Canaletto, the main painter of views of Venice in the 18th century. His early figurative paintings were carried out in association with his brother, Gian Antonio, but in about 1760 Guardi turned to view painting.
Francesco Guardi (born 1712, Venice, Italy—died 1793, Venice) was one of the outstanding Venetian landscape painters of the Rococo period. Francesco and his brother Nicolò (1715–86) were trained under their elder brother, Giovanni Antonio Guardi.
Guardi’s technique is far looser and less adherent to the geometric ordering of the square, its pavement, and facades. Guardi employs a playful, illusionistic device by signing his name in the miniature canvas being carried by the man at lower right.
Francesco Guardi - Piazza San Marco - The Metropolitan Museum of Art
'Francesco Guardi based this drawing on a picture much like one by Luca Carlevarijs, now in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, London. It is a capriccio, an imaginary view that was popular...
From the 1780s onwards Guardi’s style increasingly moved away from that of Canaletto and he included more fantastical elements in his views. He evolved towards the depiction of his so-called Capricci, which are ideal or unreal combinations of architectural elements and landscape.