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Creator:
Richard Parkes Bonington, 1802–1828
Title:
Corso Sant'Anastasia, Verona
Former Title(s):

Corso Sant'Anastasia, Verona, Italy

A highly finished view of the Palace of Count Maffei at Verona
Date:
1828
Materials & Techniques:
Oil on millboard
Dimensions:
25 5/8 x 17 3/8 inches (65.1 x 44.1 cm), Frame: 30 1/4 × 24 × 3 7/8 inches (76.8 × 61 × 9.8 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1981.25.58
Classification:
Paintings
Collection:
Paintings and Sculpture
Link to Frame:
B1981.25.58FR
Subject Terms:
architectural subject | architecture | audience | balconies | banners | buildings | Catholicism | cityscape | costume | facade | flags | friars | genre subject | light | market (event) | men | observers | palace | piazza | priests | procession | shadow | sky | square | street | street | tapestries | tourism | women
Associated Places:
Corso Sant'Anastasia | Italy | Palazzo Maffei | Veneto | Verona
Access:
On view at the Yale University Art Gallery
Link:
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:5024
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For the romantic traveler, the key associations of Verona were literary. It was where Dante Alighieri lived in exile from Florence, and it provided the setting of plays by William Shakespeare, most famously the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. Richard Parkes Bonington spent several days in the city in April 1826 as part of a trip to Venice and Florence, the only visit to Italy of his short life. Working in London two years later on the basis of sketches done on site, Bonington sought to capture the brilliant intensity of Italian light and color and to enhance the picturesque nature of the view through the inclusion of a religious procession. This was probably the last painting Bonington completed before the onset of his final illness. It was in his studio at the time of his death.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016


For the Romantic traveler, the key associations of Verona were literary. It was where Dante Alighieri lived in exile from Florence, and it provided the decidedly notional setting of plays by William Shakespeare, most famously the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. Bonington's inclusion of the religious procession reflects a fascination felt by many modern Europeans with the ancient, picturesque, and mysterious aspects of Catholicism. The people on the balconies look down as though from one period of history upon another. The Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829 brought emancipation to English Catholics. Bonington himself was born a Unitarian.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2005
Bonington visited Italy in 1826, and some of the masterpieces of his last years are views of Venice and Verona. This exquisite and dazzling Veronese street scene shows the Corso Sant'Anastasia looking toward the Piazza dell'Erbe, the city's main market square. In the middle distance to the right is the projecting facade of the Casa Maffei, the palace of the eighteenth-century historian and man of letters Count Scipio Maffei. For travelers of the Romantic age, the chief importance of Verona lay in its resonant literary associations. It was here that Dante lived in exile during the power struggle between the Black and White Guelph factions in Florence, as described in his Paradiso, and lovers of English literature knew the city well-at least by name-as the setting of plays by Shakespeare. In his guidebook Voyages historiques et littéraires en Italie, pendant les années 1826, 1827, et 1828 (1831), the French writer Antoine Valery remarked:
Shakespeare and Dante seem to meet at Verona, the one through his works, the other through his misfortunes, and the imagination delights here in bringing together these two great geniuses, so tremendous, so creative and perhaps the most astonishing of modern literature.[1]
Though showing the people on the balconies dressed in the fashion of the day, Bonington gives pride of place to a religious procession that would have looked much the same in the time of Dante or Shakespeare; and he could surely count upon the sight of Veronese balconies and friars to conjure up memories of Romeo and Juliet. The spectacle is redolent of the past in general, of the faded glory that was almost every British or French visitor's leading impression of Italy, and of the fascination with which modern Europeans regarded the picturesque and mysterious aspects of Roman Catholicism. Some of the people on the balconies are undoubtedly tourists, looking down as though from one period of human history upon another.
Leaving his home in Paris on April 4, 1826, Bonington came to Italy with his aristocratic friend and patron Charles Rivet. They reached Verona on April 18 and stayed there for a few days before moving on to their principal destination, Venice, where they spent about a month. In Verona Bonington made one or more drawings of the view along the Corso Sant'Anastasia and possibly the watercolor version of the subject now at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the watercolor, which he gave to his fellow watercolorist Thomas Shotter Boys, was to become one of his most celebrated works, especially among other artists. The present painting is the second of two oil versions of the same view that followed; he never revisited Italy, and almost certainly based them on the earlier watercolor, in both cases varying the figures and certain architectural details. The first oil, which is smaller, dates from 1827 (private collection). The second was probably painted in the summer of 1828, by which time the artist was living in London. It is the only version to include the religious procession, which Bonington seems to have adapted from a large exhibition picture of a Venetian subject that he had painted in the preceding year, The Ducal Palace with a Religious Procession (Tate Gallery). Corso Sant'Anastasia, Verona may well have been his last painting before the onset of his fatal illness; it was still in his studio at the time of his death on September 23, 1828, appeared in the sale of his remaining works at Sotheby's in 1829, and was bought by the Marquess of Stafford.

[1] Noon 1991, 251.

Malcolm Warner

Malcolm Warner, This other Eden, paintings from the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1998, p. 144, no. 58, ND1314.3 Y36 1998 (YCBA)

YUAG European Galleries (Yale University Art Gallery, 2023-12-01 - 2025-01-15) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

In a New Light: Paintings from the Yale Center for British Art (Yale University Art Gallery, 2023-03-24 - 2023-12-03) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

The Critique of Reason : Romantic Art, 1760–1860 (Yale University Art Gallery, 2015-03-06 - 2015-07-26) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Constable to Delacroix : British Art and the French Romantics 1820-1840 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003-09-29 - 2004-01-04) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Constable to Delacroix : British Art and the French Romantics 1820-1840 (Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2003-06-01 - 2003-08-27) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Constable to Delacroix : British Art and the French Romantics 1820-1840 (Tate Britain, 2003-02-06 - 2003-05-11) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Edward Lear and the Art of Travel (Yale Center for British Art, 2000-09-20 - 2001-01-14) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Art Gallery of South Australia, 1998-09-16 - 1998-11-15) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Queensland Art Gallery, 1998-07-15 - 1998-09-06) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1998-05-01 - 1998-07-05) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

Richard Parkes Bonington (Musée du Petit Palais, 1992-03-05 - 1992-05-17) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Richard Parkes Bonington (Yale Center for British Art, 1991-11-13 - 1992-01-19) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

David Blayney Brown, Paris, Petit Palais - Bonington, Burlington Magazine, vol. 134, May 1992, p. 327, fig. 56, N1 B87 + (YCBA) [YCBA]

Christie's Advertisement for Sale on July 16, 1965, Burlington Magazine, v. 107, no. 748, July, 1965, p. xxii, N1 B87 + OVERSIZE (YCBA) Also available Online (Orbis) [YCBA]

Christie's Advertisement for sale on July 16, 1965, Apollo, v. 82, no. 41, July 1965, p. xi, N1 A54 + (YCBA) [YCBA]

Malcolm Cormack, Bonington, Phaidon, Oxford, 1989, pp. 113-114, 140, no. 90, NJ18 B65 C67 + (YCBA) [YCBA]

Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 26-27, N590.2 .A83 (YCBA) [YCBA]

A. Dubuisson, Richard Parkes Bonington : His life and work, , John Lane, London, 1924, p. 169, NJ18 B65 +D8 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Stephen Duffy, Richard Parkes Bonington, Trustees of the Wallace Collection, London, 2003, p. 54, NJ18 B65 D84 2003 + (YCBA) [YCBA]

Luke Herrmann, Nineteenth century British painting, Giles de la Mare, London, 2000, p. 149, no. 101, ND467 H47 2000 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Peter Humfrey, The Stafford Gallery : the greatest art collection of Regency London, Unicorn Press, Norwich, 2019, pp. 129, 130, fig. 81, N1165 S73 H86 2019 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Julia Marciari-Alexander, This other Eden : Paintings from the Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1998, p. 144, no. 58, ND1314.3 Y36 1998 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Patrick Noon, Constable to Delacroix : British art and the French romanticism, , Tate Publishing, London, 2003, p. 231, no. 141, ND457 N66 2003 + (YCBA) [YCBA]

Patrick Noon, Crossing the Channel : British and French painting in the age of romanticism, Tate Publishing, London, p. 231, no. 141, ND467.5.R6 N66 2003 Oversize (YCBA) [YCBA]

Patrick Noon, Richard Parkes Bonington : "On the pleasure of painting", , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1991, p. 292-93..., no. 155, NJ18 B65 N66 1991 + (YCBA) [YCBA]

Patrick Noon, Richard Parkes Bonington : the complete paintings, , Yale University Press, New Haven, 2008, p. 49, 59, 60, no. 221, NJ18 B65 A12 N66 2008 + (YCBA) [YCBA]

Paul Mellon's Legacy : a passion for British art [large print labels], , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, v. 3, N5220 M552 P381 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Marcia R. Pointon, Bonington, Francia & Wyld, B.T. Batsford, London, 1985, p. 137-38, fig. 65, NJ18 B65 A12 P65 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Marion L. Spencer, R.P. Bonington, 1802-1828., Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery, Nottingham, 1965, p. 30, no. 219, pl. 11, NJ18 B65 S74 (YCBA) [YCBA]

The Sale Room, Apollo, v. 82, no. 44, October 1965, p. 351, fig. 8, N1 A54 (LC) OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Scott Wilcox, Edward Lear and the art of travel, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2000, pp. 146-147, no. 163, NJ18 L455 W55 2000 (YCBA) [YCBA]


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