Guardì, Francesco de'

GUARDÌ, Francesco de'. - Painter, b. 5 Oct. 1712 in Venice, d. there 1 Jan. 1793. He was a pupil and a ring on the right hand, over the sleeve. The use therefore appears to have been introduced in France and passes very soon to Rome: in 1070 Alexander II granted the privilege of it to the abbot of S. Pietro in Ciel d'oro in Pavia. The terms scantus and manica were soon replaced by the Byzantine one of chiroteca, used today.

At the consecration of a bishop they are handed over at the end of the Mass, and they are used only by bishops and other prelates having the privilege, at the pontifical Mass from the beginning to the Lavabo (in the Ambrosian rite until the Offertory) and of his elder brother Giovanni Antonio (1698-1760), but he formed himself particularly on the examples of Sebastiano and Marco Ricci and, to a lesser extent, of G. B. Tiepolo, his brother-in-law.

Famous above all as a view painter, in which he excels for the freedom of his swift touch, the intuitive perspectival synthesis of the landscape and his sensitivity as a colourist, G. also painted paintings of religious subject of very great note. In these latter, with their nervous form, resulting from an impetuous, fragmented and descriptive brushstroke, G. interprets Magnasco and Sebastiano Ricci in an original way. Among the paintings of religious subject: two Crucifixions in the Brass collection in Venice; the Madonna and Child with Saints, an altarpiece in the parish church of Vigo D'Anaunia, and, a masterpiece, the canvases with Stories of Tobias in the parish church of the archangel Raphael, in Venice.

Luigi Grassi