In his younger years, Francesco Guardi dedicated his attention
to figure painting, working mainly for the Giovanellis, a family
from Bergamo who had come to Venice, where they became part of
the local patrician class during the 17th century. We do not
know exactly when he made the decisive move to take up landscape
painting, but he may well have started in the mid-1750s, when
tourists started coming back to Venice (foreigners were those
most willing to purchase views of the city) after the Austrian
War of Succession had come to an end. His oldest known view
dates back to 1758: it is now housed in the Ashmolean Museum in
Oxford and depicts the Night Procession in Piazza San Marco to
celebrate the ascension to the papal throne of a Venetian,
Cardinal Carlo Rezzonico (who became Pope Clement XIII), which
took place in the summer of that year. The painting in the
Treviso museum, which is signed “ Francesco Guardi fecit ” lower
left, is stylistically similar to the view in Oxford and can
thus also be dated to the