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Joseph Smith (1682–1770)
Joseph Smith (c. 1682 – Venice, 6 November 1770), often known as Consul Smith, was the British consul at Venice from 1744 to 1760. Dates given in the ''London Gazette'' prior to 1752 are old style, by modern standards, with the year beginning on 1 January, rather than 25 March, this date falls in 1744 He was a patron of artists, most notably Canaletto, a collector and connoisseur, banker to the British community at Venice, and a major draw on the British Grand Tour. His collection of drawings was bought for George III of Great Britain and forms a nucleus of the Royal Collection of drawings in the Print Room at Windsor Castle. Smith the collector Joseph Smith, a man of obscure origins, was educated at Westminster School before travelling to Venice. He took up residence there in 1700 in the import-export trade and merchant banking house of Thomas Williams, the British consul at that time. Smith eventually headed the partnership of Williams and Smith and made a modest fortune. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Venezia 2009, Palazzo Smith Mangilli Valmarana - Foto Di Paolo Steffan
Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are linked by 438 bridges. The islands are in the shallow Venetian Lagoon, an enclosed bay lying between the mouths of the Po and the Piave rivers (more exactly between the Brenta and the Sile). As of 2025, 249,466 people resided in greater Venice or the Comune of Venice, of whom about 51,000 live in the historical island city of Venice (''centro storico'') and the rest on the mainland (''terraferma''). Together with the cities of Padua and Treviso, Venice is included in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area (PATREVE), which is considered a statistical metropolitan area, with a total population of 2.6 million. The name is derived from the ancient Veneti people who inhabited the region by the 10th century BC. The city was the capital ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carlo Goldoni
Carlo Osvaldo Goldoni (, also , ; 25 February 1707 – 6 February 1793) was an Italian playwright and librettist from the Republic of Venice. His works include some of Italy's most famous and best-loved plays. Audiences have admired the plays of Goldoni for their ingenious mix of wit and honesty. His plays offered his contemporaries images of themselves, often dramatizing the lives, values, and conflicts of the emerging middle classes. Though he wrote in French and Italian, his plays make rich use of the Venetian language, regional vernacular, and colloquialisms. Goldoni also wrote under the pen name and title ''Polisseno Fegeio, Pastor Arcade'', which he claimed in his memoirs the " Arcadians of Rome" bestowed on him. Biography Memoirs There is an abundance of autobiographical information on Goldoni, most of which comes from the introductions to his plays and from his ''Memoirs''. However, these memoirs are known to contain many errors of fact, especially about his earli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Engraving
Engraving is the practice of incising a design on a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a Burin (engraving), burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or Glass engraving, glass are engraved, or may provide an Intaglio (printmaking), intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing images on paper as prints or illustrations; these images are also called "engravings". Engraving is one of the oldest and most important techniques in printmaking. Wood engravings, a form of relief printing and stone engravings, such as petroglyphs, are not covered in this article. Engraving was a historically important method of producing images on paper in artistic printmaking, in mapmaking, and also for commercial reproductions and illustrations for books and magazines. It has long been replaced by various photographic processes in its commercial applications and, partly because of the difficulty of learning the techni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Etching
Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio (incised) in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other types of material. As a method of printmaking, it is, along with engraving, the most important technique for old master prints, and remains in wide use today. In a number of modern variants such as microfabrication etching and photochemical milling, it is a crucial technique in modern technology, including circuit boards. In traditional pure etching, a metal plate (usually of copper, zinc or steel) is covered with a waxy ground which is resistant to acid. The artist then scratches off the ground with a pointed etching needle where the artist wants a line to appear in the finished piece, exposing the bare metal. The échoppe, a tool with a slanted oval section, is also used for "swelling" lines. The plate is then dipped in a bath of aci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Canaletto
Giovanni Antonio Canal (18 October 1697 – 19 April 1768), commonly known as Canaletto (), was an Italian painter from the Republic of Venice, considered an important member of the 18th-century Venetian school. Painter of cityscapes or '' vedute'', of Venice, Rome, and London, he also painted imaginary views (referred to as capricci), although the demarcation in his works between the real and the imaginary is never quite clearcut.Alice Binion and Lin Barton. "Canaletto." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 6 Jan. 2017 He was further an important printmaker using the etching technique. In the period from 1746 to 1756, he worked in England, where he painted many views of London and other sites, including Warwick Castle and Alnwick Castle. He was highly successful in England, thanks to the British merchant and connoisseur Joseph "Consul" Smith, whose large collection of Canaletto's works was sold to King George III in 1762. Early career ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Veduta
A ''veduta'' (; : ''vedute'') is a highly detailed, usually large-scale painting or, more often, old master print, print of a cityscape or some other vista. The painters of ''vedute'' are referred to as ''vedutisti''. Origins This genre of landscape art, landscape originated in Flanders, where artists such as Paul Bril painted ''vedute'' as early as the 16th century. In the 17th century, Dutch painters made a specialty of detailed and accurate recognizable city and landscapes that appealed to the sense of local pride of the wealthy Dutch middle class. An archetypal example is Johannes Vermeer's ''View of Delft (Vermeer), View of Delft''. The Ghent architect, draughtsman and engraver Lieven Cruyl (1640–1720) contributed to the development of the ''vedute'' during his residence in Rome in the late 17th century. Cruyl's drawings reproduce the topographical aspects of the urban landscape. 18th century As the itinerary of the Grand Tour became somewhat standardized, ''vedute'' of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Decamerone
''The Decameron'' (; or ''Decamerone'' ), subtitled ''Prince Galehaut'' (Old ) and sometimes nicknamed ''l'Umana commedia'' ("the Human comedy", as it was Boccaccio that dubbed Dante Alighieri's ''Comedy'' "''Divine''"), is a collection of short stories by the 14th-century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375). The book is structured as a frame story containing 100 tales told by a group of seven young women and three young men; they shelter in a secluded villa just outside Florence in order to escape the Black Death, which was afflicting the city. The epidemic is likely what Boccaccio used for the basis of the book which was thought to be written between 1348–1353. The various tales of love in ''The Decameron'' range from the erotic to the tragic. Tales of wit, practical jokes, and life lessons also contribute to the mosaic. In addition to its literary value and widespread influence (for example on Chaucer's ''Canterbury Tales''), it provides a document of life at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio ( , ; ; 16 June 1313 – 21 December 1375) was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. Born in the town of Certaldo, he became so well known as a writer that he was sometimes simply known as "the Certaldese" and one of the most important figures in the European literary panorama of the fourteenth century. Some scholars (including Vittore Branca) define him as the greatest European prose writer of his time, a versatile writer who amalgamated different literary trends and genres, making them converge in original works, thanks to a creative activity exercised under the banner of experimentalism. His most notable works are ''The Decameron'', a collection of short stories, and '' On Famous Women''. ''The Decameron'' became a determining element for the Italian literary tradition, especially after Pietro Bembo elevated the Boccaccian style to a model of Italian prose in the sixteenth century. Boccaccio wr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giovanni Battista Pasquali
Giovanni Battista Pasquali was a leading Printer (publisher), printer in 18th-century Venice, supported by the British consul Joseph Smith (1682–1770), a patron and collector. Pasquali was a scholar himself, who published his own essays as well as finely printed, unpretentious editions for a scholarly readership.Anne Palms Chalmers, "Venetian Book Design in the Eighteenth Century" ''The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin'', 29.5 (January 1971:226-235) p. 227. He signed the Latin preface to his printed catalogue of Smith's distinguished library, ''Bibliotheca Smithiana, seu Catalogus librorum d. Josephi Smithii'' (Venice: Pasquali, 1755). Pasquali's peers in the revival of fine printing among the Printing press, presses of Venice were the editor and connoisseur Giovanni Battista Albrizzi and the political writer and publisher Antonio Zatta. File:Pasquali.jpg File:Pasquali Giambattista2.jpg File:Pasquali Giambattista3.jpg Notes Bibliography * {{DEFAULTSORT:Pasquali, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
