Guardi, Francesco

Francesco Guardi (Venice, 5 October 1712 - Venice, 1 January 1793) was an Italian painter and one of the last great masters of Venetian view painting. Although he also painted capricci and devotional works, he is best known for poetic vedute in which architecture, light, and atmosphere dissolve into flickering brushwork. His art gives eighteenth-century Venice an unforgettable image of fragile brilliance.