The Heirs of Canaletto

The Heirs of Canaletto: Fabio Mauroner and Emanuele Brugnoli in Venice, 1905-1940

March - May 2011 Embassy of Italy Washington, DC 20008

The Heirs of Canaletto: Fabio Mauroner and Emanuele Brugnoli in Venice, 1905-1940 In the early twentieth century, the Italian printmakers Fabio Mauroner (1884 – 1948) and Emanuele Brugnoli (1859 – 1944) depicted the everyday life of contemporary Venetians amid the picturesque surroundings of the lagoon city. As residents, they knew the back alleys and hidden courtyards that foreigners often overlooked. They represented the life of the inhabitants, the city’s celebrations, holidays, and important religious feasts, as well as regattas on the Grand Canal. Unlike visitors, Mauroner and Brugnoli knew a Venice that only natives and longtime residents recognized and they captured it in a series of brilliantly etched images. The present exhibition is the first American showing of Mauroner since 1938. Brugnoli has never been the subject of a monograph in English or an exhibition in the United States.

Fabio Mauroner was born on July 22, 1884 in Tissano in the province of Udine in northern Italy. In 1904 he went to Rome where he studied with the watercolorist Enrico Nardi. Mauroner encountered etching at this time in an exhibition of works by the Irishman Edward Millington Synge. In 1905, Mauroner moved to Venice, taking classes at the Academy of Fine Arts and sharing a studio with the young avant-garde painter Amedeo Modigliani near the church of San Sebastiano. The following year Mauroner studied printmaking with Synge when the Irishman opened a new studio near the church of San Trovaso. Mauroner always referred to Synge as his master later in his career.

Mauroner was also inspired by the American Ernest David Roth’s prints of Venice in the 1907 Biennale. Roth had arrived in Italy in 1905, producing his earliest etchings in Florence and Venice. His Venetian work inspired many international etchers to attempt their own interpretations of the city, including Herman Webster and Donald Shaw MacLaughlan. Mauroner saw Roth’s prints of A Street in Venice and the Rialto Bridge in the 1907 International Biennale, works acquired from the show by Queen Margherita of Italy. Roth and Mauroner etched similar diminutive plates of the Ca’ da Mosto palace on the Grand Canal in 1905 and of the cloister of San Gregorio in 1907. They became close friends, and Roth was instrumental in later introducing Mauroner’s work to an American audience.

In Mauroner’s personal print collection, preserved in Udine, are thirteen prints by Ernest Roth, many with individual salutations, including eight Christmas cards.

Fabio Mauroner, The Votive Bridge on the Day of the Dead (Ponte dei Morti), 1906, etching, private collection.

Mauroner’s earliest prints demonstrate his predilection for aspects of Venetian life that were more familiar to residents than visitors. His 1906 Bridge on the Day of the Dead (Ponte dei Morti) represents the procession of mourners across the pontoon bridge constructed each year on All Soul’s Day, November 2. The temporary span connected the Fondamenta Nuova, the quay on the northern side of the Cannaregio district, to the cemetery island of San Michele. Mauroner’s early etching Vespers in Basilica San Marco (1906) also attests to his experience as a resident, concentrating on the activities of the devout rather than on the picturesque aspects of the church’s interior. Throughout his career, Mauroner returned to images of the daily life and religious rites of native Venetians. His preoccupation with these subjects is seen in the exhibition in The Benediction over the Holy Relics (1920), and in the series of large prints of 1924 that includes The Rialto Market, Trattoria “La Vida” (Campo San Giacomo dell’Orio), La Sagra (Campo San Giovanni della Bragola), La Processione (The Votive Bridge of Santa Maria della Salute), and The Regatta (San Toma’).

Fabio Mauroner, The Four Bridges, 1907, etching, private collection.

Other Mauroner prints are closer to the sketch-like approach of James McNeill Whistler and Ernest David Roth in their attempts to capture the fleeting effects of the Venetian cityscape. The Traghetto (1907) and The Four Bridges (1907) represent typical views of Venice: canals, gondolas, and bridges.

The Four Bridges represents a water level view under the Canonica Bridge from the quay alongside the church of San Apollonia. Atypically for Mauroner, the view reverses the actual scene, since Mauroner sketched on site, directly on the plate. (The etching technique reverses the drawing on the plate during printing, a process taken into account by artists concerned with topographical accuracy.) Unlike Whistler and other foreign artists whose collectors and admirers were thousands of miles away, Mauroner often reversed the image on the plate so that in the printing an accurate view would be produced for his mainly local patrons. Other Mauroner prints capturing distinctive corners of daily Venetian experience include The Great Door of the Servi (1911), Corte Bottera (1913), Palazzo Clary (1920), and An Angle of Venice (1934).

Fabio Mauroner, Trattoria “La Vida” (Campo San Giacomo dell’Orio), 1924, private collection.

In many ways, Mauroner was continuing a tradition initiated by Luca Carlevarijs and continued by Canaletto and Marieschi in the eighteenth century. Throughout his career Mauroner was aware of this great epoch of the Venetian vedute, seen in the works of Canaletto, Bernardo Bellotto, and Francesco Guardi. Some of Mauroner’s greatest achievements represent a continuation of their approach to depicting major monuments of Venetian history, including his views of the Piazza San Marco (1925), The Piazzetta (1925), The Molo (1920), The Grand Canal (Canalazzo) (1925), The Riva degli Schiavoni (1926) and The Rialto Bridge (1929). Mauroner exhibited his prints regularly in Venice in the summer shows at Ca’ Pesaro beginning in 1909, and in the Venice Biennale starting in 1922. In 1948, the year of his death, the Venice Biennale included a retrospective of his etchings.

Fabio Mauroner, La Processione (The Votive Bridge of Santa Maria della Salute), 1924, private collection.

Mauroner’s prints were included in exhibitions of the Chicago Society of Etchers in 1925, the same year he had his first American one-man exhibition at the Ehrich Gallery in New York City. Later exhibitions took place at the Seattle Fine Arts Society in 1926 and at Wellesley College in 1938. This last exhibition was organized by Elizabeth Whitmore, the founder of The Print Corner in Hingham Center, Massachusetts. Whitmore was a freelance curator and author of a monograph on Ernest David Roth. She became a tireless promoter of Mauroner and other printmakers of the era including Roth and John Taylor Arms.

Whitmore regularly exhibited Mauroner’s etchings in her galleries and in other Massachusetts venues.

The most important collection of Mauroner’s work was left by his widow to the Civica Galleria d’Arte Moderna (GAMUD) and the Civici Musei e Galleria di Storia e Arte Antica in Udine. Major collections of his works in the United States are in the John Taylor Fabio Mauroner, The Benediction over the Holy Relics, 1920, etching, private collection.

Arms Print Collection in the College of Wooster Art Museum in Wooster, Ohio, and in the Trout Gallery of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Mauroner’s works are also in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Ca’ Pesaro Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Venice, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Library of Congress.

From 1905 to 1938, Mauroner produced approximately one hundred and thirty prints before retiring from etching to become a scholar of Venetian Renaissance and Baroque art. One of his friends in Venice was Emanuele Brugnoli, instructor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice and founder of its school of etching.

Fabio Mauroner, The Gondola, 1931, etching, private collection.

Brugnoli was born in Bologna in 1859, moving to Venice in 1880. He began teaching at the Academy in 1912. Brugnoli’s respect and affection for the younger Mauroner is seen in the dedications on impressions of two of his prints now in GAMUD. On Santa Maria Formosa (1920) the inscription reads “Al carissimo collega Mauroner, Venezia, 1921.” On another print Brugnoli wrote, “con sincera stima,” with sincere respect. Brugnoli was similar to Mauroner in his presentation of Venetian life in his era, but offered a more panoramic view of the energy of the city and its people. His large-scale images, Campo Santa Margarita (1920) and Campo Santa Maria Formosa teem with the everyday activities of working class Venetians.

Mauroner and Brugnoli differed from foreign artists such as American expatriates James McNeill Whistler, John Taylor Arms, and Ernest David Roth, who saw Venice as a series of picturesque views but were indifferent to the daily lives of the Venetians. This was, however, precisely what Whistler originally claimed to have discovered, “the Venice of the Venetians.” In Mauroner and Brugnoli’s work, images of the working class squares of Campo Santa Margarita, Campo San Giacomo dell’Orio,and Campo San Giovanni in Bragora spring to life as centers of Venetian everyday life, whether at the daily fish and flea markets, or at the puppet shows during Carnevale. Mauroner and Brugnoli demonstrated an equally high level of dedication to their craft as did their better known foreign counterparts but represented a distinctively local approach to Venetian imagery.

Dr. Eric Denker, Curator

Emanuelle Brugnoli, Campo Santa Margarita, 1920, etching, private collection.

Our gratitude to H.E. Giulio Terzi, Ambassador of Italy to the United States, to Renato Miracco, Cultural Attaché, to Alberto Manai, Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Washington, DC and to the staff of the Embassy of Italy and of the Italian Cultural Institute. Our sincere thanks also to Tom Whitmore and to Franco and Maria Ferrari and to Dott. Isabella Reale and the staff of the Civica Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Udine. Our appreciation to Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, for allowing the etchings by Fabio Mauroner and Emanuele Brugnoli to be exhibited at the Italian Embassy. The event is part of Italy@150, a program that celebrates Italy’s 150th anniversary in Washington, DC and throughout the United States, with a series of activities organized under the auspices of the President of the Republic of Italy.

Designed by Zev Slurzberg

Cover: Fabio Mauroner, Basilica of San Marco, 1926, etching, private collection.