Copy after Francesco Guardi
The story
Francesco Guardi's son Giacomo trained in his father's studio in Venice and went on painting the city in the family manner after Francesco died in 1793, well into the 19th century. He worked mostly in small formats, views a visitor could carry home, and he was not the only one. Other painters repeated Guardi's compositions too, for buyers who kept asking for them.
Copy after Francesco Guardi is the label a museum gives to one of those repetitions. The design is Guardi's and the brushwork belongs to someone else, usually a hand nobody can name. The label makes no claim that Guardi ever touched the picture. It is also narrower than follower of Guardi, which describes a painter working in his manner, because a copy reproduces one particular picture that can be pointed to.
In Boston the original behind such a copy is known. It is a view of the Rio dei Mendicanti, a small panel that hangs today in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo.
