La fotosintesi del cambiamento

This essay aims to give a reading of Guglielmo Ciardi’s painting Canale della Giudecca focused on light and synthesis of pictorial elements. The second half of the 19th century is a very intense period for Venice: the Serenissima experience recently ended and modernity is arriving in the form of new bridges and ferries. The Academy of Art is living a big revolution and artists are travelling, learning new techniques and painting en plein air. Guglielmo Ciardi is in this way a man of his times and he gives a very good proof of it in this painting. Thanks to critical readings and secondary sources Ciardi’s creative process will be here analysed and explained with particular stress on light and synthesis. Therefore, Canale della Giudecca is interpreted here as a manifesto and a ‘photo-synthesis’ of the painter’s art, of the landscape painting changes and as a symbol of the 1868 venetian historical and cultural context.