J. Paul Getty Museum: A Painting of Venice by Luca Carlevarijs

  This had been the fourth time visiting J. Paul Getty Museum (also known as the Getty) for me. The Getty has collections of sketches, paintings, and sculptures, which date back to various eras; some are more than a thousand years old, and some are barely a century old. From the past three visits to the museum, I mainly focused on viewing the sculptures and the sketches, so I decided to pay more attention to the paintings this time. There were so many that I looked into, but among those, I'd like to share brief information and personal opinions a painting that caught my interest the most. But before I begin, let me announce that I will be using a picture from the Internet since the one I took myself is in an extremely low quality (my digital camera is more than a decade old and the camera on my cell phone has been broken for months).

A Regatta on the Grand Canal in Honor of Frederick IV, King of Denmark, 1711

This painting is called A Regatta on the Grand Canal in Honor of Frederick IV, King of Denmark, a work done by an artist named Luca Carlevarijs in 1711. This work had been painted while Frederick IV was visiting Venice, Italy, on a day a regatta (a type of boat racing) was held in the Grand Canal.
Born in 1663, Italy, Luca Carlevarijs was a painter, a printmaker, and an architect. What is interesting about him is that he was never formally trained as a painter but nevertheless, he was one of the excelling Venetian view painter of his era. It is known that scholars consider him as the first artist to recognize the importance of Venice as a center of International activities and depicted it in his works. He illustrated 104 views of Venice that were considered to be the most complete survey of the city, which presented him with an artistic success during his lifetime. A Regatta on the Grand Canal in Honor of Frederick IV, King of Denmark is notable in that it represents his survey of the city, and captures a historical event at the same time.

This oil painting on a 53 1/8 x 102 1/4 in canvas, despite its size, captures an enormous amount of details from the decorations on buildings and boats to the facial expression of each individual. The sense of perspective was handled profoundly by blurring out the colors of the objects far away from the painter, and by the proper application of vanishing points. The light logic seemed to be exaggerated in that the shading of the boats and people are much more intense than that of the buildings that are equidistant from the painter's view. On the other hand, this exaggeration could have been done purposefully to lead the viewers' focus towards the event (the regatta) rather than the surroundings.