MARIESCHI, Michele
(b. 1710, Venezia, d. 1743, Venezia)

Capriccio of a Riverside Town

c. 1735
Oil on canvas, 51 x 75 cm
Private collection

The painting represents a capriccio of an imagined cityscape with Saint Mark's Basilica and ruins on the banks of a river. This imagined riverside town is typical of the spirited and picturesque landscapes created early in the career of Michele Marieschi. The artist includes celebrated and instantly recognizable edifices, such as Venice's Saint Mark's Basilica here, and places them side by side with fantasy buildings and crumbling ruins. The artist is not bound by rules of perspective: the ruined columns and the tower overgrown with greenery are painted to a completely different scale than the houses directly opposite them on the other side of the river at right. They dwarf the figures beneath them, who cross the bridge between the two sides.