Fisherman in the Lagoon

This painting depicts a young fisherman standing in the Venetian lagoon on a brilliant blue morning. The subject was treated several times by the painter from the 1870s on, but in this canvas the handling is more confident and less analytical than in others like In the valley - Venetian Lagoon, which enables us to date it to some years later. With respect to the latter, the figure of the fisherman is central here, in keeping with the animated view favoured by the artist, which we also find in Giudecca Canal and Gondola on the Lagoon, and which characterises the landscape painting of other Veneto artists like Pietro Fragiacomo, as attested by his Lagoonscape with Boats (Milan, Intesa Sanpaolo Collection). The Cariplo canvas has a greater immediacy, however. The fisherman is depicted as he lifts up his net and walks towards the shore; the horizon is barely delineated by spots of colour indicating a town in the distance and there are several boats, depicted with rapid touches, sailing across the lagoon. The close observation and pictorial rendering of real life in this picture show that Ciardi’s landscape painting was profoundly influenced by the Macchiaioli and the anti-academic Scuola di Resina, with whom he trained respectively in Florence and Naples.