[...] the drawing showcases some of the best aspects of his graphic works: that flighty, nervous and cursory sign that is his characteristic trait.

This drawing features a subject that was particularly dear to Francesco Guardi. He depicted it several times over the course of his career, particularly in certain paintings that provided him with an opportunity for including scenes of everyday life and lively figures. However, there is only one other known graphic work of the Clock Tower by him, conserved at the Petit Palais in Paris and showing more or less the same angle of the scene as the drawing in the Cerruti Collection. Morassi considered the Parisian drawing to be a preparatory work for the painting now conserved at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna.¹ The angle on the sheet in question is slightly wider and instead suggests comparisons with the view formerly in a private collection in New York,² although the link is not close enough for it to be considered a preparatory piece. In fact, there are some significant variations in the definition of the figures in the foreground: particularly the group with the woman holding a basket, accompanied by a dog, missing both from the Parisian drawing and the various known painted versions. 

Over and beyond the somewhat original angle and the potential links with Guardi’s paintings, the drawing showcases some of the best aspects of his graphic works: that flighty, nervous and cursory sign that is his characteristic trait. Despite the difficulty placing his work in chronological order, particularly his drawings, in this piece we seem to be able to glimpse a more mature and knowing style, far removed from the Canaletto-style models that he had assimilated and translated in his own way. We can therefore date it to around the 1780s. 

Denis Ton 

¹ Morassi 1984, vol. III, p. 137, fig. 330. 

² Id. 1973, cat. 354.