Munich: Venice exhibition in the Pinakothek der Moderne – Munich

A strong man in a shirt and trousers is seen from the rear, slightly below, the weight resting on the right leg while the left is splayed. His right arm holds a long pole lowered to the left, the grip of the hand is covered by the thigh, the left arm bent, the floor only indicated, otherwise light hatching and a lot of air around the body. It is a small drawing by the great Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778), who came from Venice and probably captured the typical posture of a gondolier with a pen. Was he sitting behind the man in the boat, did the rocking on the water perhaps have a part in some of the squiggles and lines? The small drawing has an immediate effect, but as clearly as it shows everyday things, the idea behind it seems just as enigmatic.

The leaves of Gian Battista Tiepolo’s grandiose etching cycle of Capricci remain deliberately mysterious, despite the wealth of associations they trigger: a nymph leans in a stone niche, her left hand resting on the body of a satyr boy who is dreaming, behind the In both, a billy goat strides past a tree with a thicket around the trunk, behind which the gaze wanders into the tenderest expanse of a suggested mountain landscape. Despite their closeness, there seems to be no connection between the goat, nymph and boy, each of the three creatures is spun in on itself. The little satyr’s buck’s legs are reminiscent of the erotic connection between the buck and the human being, and the cloth that the buck is wearing on its back and which seems to reach further over the nymph’s right arm may also be reminiscent of this archaic-mythical connection. Tiepolo’s art of etching achieves an incomparable refinement in the delicacy of the lines and the richness of suggestion of the assembled motifs. Light shines through the etching everywhere, the picture seems to float like a strange dream.

Piranesi’s small sheet, trembling with the intensity of observation, and Tiepolo’s magical capriccio alone are worth a visit to the exhibition that the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung offers in the Pinakothek der Moderne in three rooms: views of and from Venice, the Serenissima, figures and faces, everyday scenes and state actions , intricate capricci and secluded idylls, and again and again the campi in front of the many churches and the squares that suddenly open up between the palazzi and town houses. It begins and ends, so to speak, on the Piazza San Marco and the Piazzetta along the Doge’s Palace with the incredible view across the water of the lagoon to Andrea Palladio’s San Giorgio Maggiore.

Representative views were readily bought by English tourists

The path leads to the representative views of the lagoon city and its prominent locations, as not only captured in the 18th century by Luca Carlevari, who originally came from the Netherlands, Michele Marieschi and Antonio Canal, known as Canaletto, in their etching cycles, but also enriched them with everyday observations and unfolded into a lively scenery full of people. Such printed views were readily bought by English tourists. During his eight-year stay in England, Canaletto had become acquainted with the preferences of his main customers. Carlevaris was the first to recognize this opportunity and put the sights in the picture accordingly. But he and all the others not only succeed in depicting imposing architecture, but all these etchings live from the always incomprehensible magic of Venice, an almost unreal structure between sky and water. The clouds are therefore cleverly reflected in the canals in these pictures, and the brightness shapes the facades so that their massiveness and structural solidity seem to be transformed into light architecture.

Prints and drawings of the Venetian type, this presentation teaches this time and time again, lives from the painterly. This can then be deepened in the very informative catalogue, which shows all the exhibits. Artists as early as the 15th century did not want to make details more precise for themselves, but rather to capture connections, moods, yes, the intangible in the interplay of sky, earth, water, light and darkness. Giulio Campagnola (1482-1516), for example, does not show the robbery of Ganymede by Zeus in the form of an eagle as a drama, but places the non-flying bird with the boy riding on it in the wide sky above a highly un-Venetian Franconian landscape, the Campagnola of a Copperplate engraving by Dürer took over. The striking effect of this engraving is that of the absolutely foreign, outrageous, unprecedented, precisely in forcing two ultimately incompatible motifs together, the old German landscape below and the mythical events above.

Open detailed view

Enormous what expressive emphases are possible in copper engraving when the native Dutch copper engraver Cornelis Cort (1533-1578), who went to Venice and found a job with Titian, increases the torture of St. Laurentius after a preliminary drawing by Titian into a frenzy of lines that conveys the horrible events can become a dramatic beacon. The mighty swirling clouds in the night-dark sky are answered by the brightly blazing fire under the grate on which the martyr is tormented: copper engraving as a special kind of painting.

With the six graceful portrait heads of young men and women engraved in copper by Teodoro Viero and the twelve “Divers portraits” etched by Giovanni David, Venetians feature prominently. In the case of David, there are noble ladies and gentlemen in the city, a servant can also be seen or a tired wigmaker who has covered himself with his cloak. An inextinguishable irony to the point of caricature lies over this great series. In the end, however, Daniele Barbaro’s gaze hits you, as Paolo Veronese drew it on brownish olive-green paper. The view is so “photographically” direct and unfiltered, as if the man were standing opposite you – unforgettable.

Venice. La Serenissima. Drawings and prints from four centuriesuntil May 8th, Pinakothek der Moderne, Barer Straße 40