Francesco Tironi (Venice, circa 1745-1797). Lot n° 12

Francesco Tironi (Venice, circa 1745-1797). 'View of the Grand Canal of Venice' Oil on canvas. 50.5 x 74 cm. Private Collection: Spain. The pair of thi painting was recently auctioned at Christie's for the sum of 25,000 pounds on July 9, 2021. Francesco Tironi was a painter active in Venice in the second half of the 18th century, and very little is known about his life. There are only comments on his drawings depicting the ports and islands of Venice, written by Giannantonio Moschini (1806). In his work 'Della letteratura veneziana del secolo XVIII fino a' nostri giorni' (Venice 1806), Moschini wrote: 'Here I will add that we must pity our Francesco Tironi, who died a few years ago at too young an age because the Ports di Venezia e le Isole drawn by him, and engraved by our Antonio Santi, show us how far he would have gone.' As we can see, this source only mentions Tironi as a draftsman and ignores his painting activity, which is first mentioned by F. De Boni in his 'Biografia degli artisti' (Venice 1840), where the master is described as a 'Venetian perspective painter' born 'in the second half of the 18th century' and deceased 'at a young age around 1800.' In the following decades, no documents about Tironi were discovered. It wasn't until 1969 when Marina Stefani Mantovanelli made public the death certificate dated February 28, 1797, the same year Venice fell, in an article published in 1969. This remarkable coincidence leads us to consider the artist as the last representative of the glorious history of vedutisti during the Serenissima Republic. From the obituary, it is revealed that Tironi was a priest, born into a Friulian family (his father was 'from Brazza') living in Corte Colonna, Venice, and that he was 'about 52 years old.' From this, it can be deduced that he must have been born in 1745.