The Zimmerli Art Museum Presents Canaletto and Domenico Tepolo Etchings

Written by Jason Sowerby Monday, 12 September 2011 22:50

New Brunswick, New Jersey.- The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum is pleased to present "Two Venetian Masters: Canaletto and Domenico Tiepolo Etchings from the Arthur Ross Foundation" on view in the Voorhees Special Exhibition Galleries until January 8th 2012. This exhibition presents etchings by Canaletto (Antonio Canal, 1697-1768) and Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (1727-1804), two of the great Italian artists who made Venice an artistic capital during the eighteenth century. Printmaking played an important but different role in each artist’s career. Canaletto worked almost exclusively as a painter and took up etching as a way to challenge himself technically and creatively. Domenico Tiepolo pursued etching to a much greater extent, making reproductive and original prints that both promoted the achievements of his artistic family and distinguished his own unique talents within it.

By the late 1730s, Canaletto was famous throughout Europe for his remarkable view paintings (known as vedute) that captured Venice’s most famous landmarks and the city’s unique atmosphere, created by the interplay of light and water. The exhibition features his series of thirty-one etchings titled 'Vedute Alter Prese Da I Luoghi Alter Ideate (Views, Some Representing Actual Sites, Others Imaginary)', in which Canaletto presents some of these Venetian sites, but also depicts landscapes of the nearby countryside along the Brenta river. His only major printmaking endeavor, these etchings are now considered landmarks in the history of printmaking for Canaletto’s fine technique and virtuoso handling of light and atmosphere. Domenico Tiepolo, son of the great history painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770) was a renowned printmaker, painter, and draftsman who managed to work in support of his father’s work while forging his own artistic identity. The exhibition includes a selection of prints from Tiepolo’s Raccolta di Teste, a remarkable series of etchings of male expressive heads. This well-established category of art was particularly prominent in eighteenth-century Venice and demonstrates Tiepolo’s formal and technical creativity within a prescribed artistic format. This series, published in 1774, showcases Tiepolo’s attention to pose, costume and physiognomy as well as his wide-ranging use of etching techniques. The exhibition also features examples of Tiepolo’s etchings of religious subjects invented by himself and his father.

The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum is located on the Voorhees Mall of the campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. It was founded in 1966. Jane Voorhees Zimmerli was the mother of philanthropist Alan Voorhees. The museum, one of the largest and most distinguished university-based museums in the nation, is located on the New Brunswick campus of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. The Zimmerli Art Museum houses more than 60,000 works, including Russian and Soviet Nonconformist Art from the acclaimed Dodge Collection, American art from the 18th-century to the present, and six centuries of European art with a particular focus on 19th-century French art. The Zimmerli is also noted for its strong holdings of works on paper, including prints, rare books, drawings, photographs, and original illustrations for children's books. Throughout the year, the Zimmerli presents world-class exhibitions with an international focus. As an educational resource serving both the University community and audiences from New Jersey and beyond, the Zimmerli offers a lively array of programs for audiences of all ages. Elementary and secondary school teachers benefit from credit-giving training programs and interactive tours for their classes. Rutgers students and community members alike enjoy the monthly Art after Hours: First Wednesdays when the Zimmerli is open until 9pm with lectures, music and dance performances, exhibition tours, poetry slams, films, performance art and more. The Zimmerli houses the Museum Store and Café Z.The Zimmerli Art Museum's collections comprise a number of areas of focus and total 60,000 works of art. Particular strengths exist in Russian and Soviet art, French nineteenth-century art and American nineteenth- and twentieth-century art with a concentration on early-twentieth-century and contemporary prints. In addition, the museum houses a research library of rare books, journals and other documents that support the French collection. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.zimmerlimuseum.rutgers.edu

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