19th century Florentine school, after ZOCCHI Giuseppe... Lot 67

19th century Florentine school, after ZOCCHI Giuseppe (1711 or 1717-1767) Florence, View of the Arno with the Ponte alla Carraia - View of the Arno with the Ponte Vecchio Pair of canvases Height : 60 ; Width : 84 cm Provenance : - Collection of Baron Hottinguer (1868-1943), in his hôtel particulier, rue de la Baume, Paris ; - Sale of the former Baron Hottinguer collection, Paris, Christie's, December 3, 2003, no. 718 (as originals by Zocchi). These two pendants are reproductions (with slight variations in the figures) of the pair of paintings by Bernardo Belloto (1721 - 1780) in the Alfred Beit Foundation, Russborough House, Ireland. According to recent archival discoveries (2012), Bellotto was invited to Florence by Marquis Andrea Gerini, who sponsored the trip, between May and September 1740. He was introduced to the circle of Anton Maria Zanetti, who acted as a liaison between the Venetian artists he knew well and the Florentine artistic milieu. Giuseppe Zocchi was another of Gerini's protégés, who financed his collections of Florentine and Roman "vedute" and his sojourns in the lagoon. The whole point of Bellotto's six known views of Florence, and of Zocchi's replicas of them, is to transpose the topographical and luminous style developed by his uncle Canaletto to sites outside Venice. outside the city of the Doges. These paintings were much sought-after by tourists on the Grand Tour. In one of the canvases, the view extends northwest, downstream, along the Arno from the Ponte alle Grazie, with the Ponte Vecchio closing the view, with the tower of the Palazzo Podestà rising to the right and beyond it the dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral, the upper part of the Giotto campanile and the Palazzo Vecchio. In the second view, we look south-east, upstream, on a diagonal with the Ponte alla Carraia to the left, and over the Oltrarno, which runs from right to left along the bank of the Lungarno Soderini: the tower of Santa Maria del Carmine, the church of San Frediano in Cestello, the bell tower and dome of Santo Spirito, rising behind it the Fort of Belvedere and in the background to the left, the church of San Miniato al Monte.