one of the outstanding Venetian landscape painters of the Rococo
period.
Francesco and his brother Nicolo (1715–86) were trained under their
elder brother, Giovanni Antonio Guardi (q.v.). Their sister Cecilia
married Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. By 1731 the brothers are recorded
as collaborating in a bottega, half-studio and half-shop. Francesco
does not appear to have adopted the practice of veduta (q.v.) view
painting, on which his fame rests, before the mid-1750s or later.
Perhaps he was impelled by the approaching death of his brother
Giovanni and the absence of competition in this profitable field
except from the aging and then unproductive Canaletto. His
earliest views are almost always signed or initialed, as though to
draw attention to his new artistic aims, and they seem inspired by
Canaletto's own works of 30 years before.
In 1782 he depicted the official celebrations in honour of the grand
duke Paul's visit to Venice, basing at least one of the compositions
on commonplace contemporary engravings. Later in the year he was
commissioned by the republic to make similar records of Pius VI's
visit, the contract specifically forbidding such copying. He enjoyed
considerable favour with the English and other foreigners and was
elected to the Venetian Academy in 1784. He was an exceedingly
prolific artist whose scintillating and romantic impressions of the
declining city are in marked contrast to Canaletto's limpid
photographic records of its architecture.
