Joseph Smith (Consul)
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Joseph Smith (born around 1674 (or 1682) in England ; died November 6, 1770 in Venice ), Consul in the Republic of Venice , was a British merchant, art collector, connoisseur and promoter in Venice. He is also known as Consul Smith , although he was not appointed to it until 1744 after years of efforts since 1716 and vacancy since 1736. In 1760 he retired from this office. In addition to trading and insurance business, he owned a publishing house that operated under the name of the printer Giovanni Battista Pasquali , and the Felicità delle Lettere bookstore on Campo S. Bartolomeo. But his main interest was art. He advised British visitors to Venice and supported the painter, engraver and architect Antonio Visentini , the painter Rosalba Carriera , the painters Sebastiano and Marco Ricci and above all Canaletto .
In the mid-18th century, Smith suffered significant financial losses as a result of the trade crisis associated with the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years' War . His collection of drawings, engravings, paintings, gems and coins was founded by the British King George III. bought and still forms the basis of the Royal Collection in the "Print Room" in Windsor Castle . Parts of this collection went to the British Museum by order of King George IV .
Life
Little is known about Smith's origins and youth. It is particularly noteworthy that neither a portrait nor a caricature of him has come down to us and there is no evidence of it in contemporary literature, although in Venice he was in constant contact with painters to whom he commissioned and whom he brokered.
Smith attended in London the Westminster School and went to Venice in 1700 in the banking and trading house of Thomas Williams, was his partner and took over from him with his brother Samuel Williams in 1711 the business. From now on he was at least wealthy, if not rich. Horace Walpole envied and mocked him as the Merchant of Venice , but Smith was able to cope with any business crisis, particularly the depression caused by the War of the Spanish Succession , albeit with difficulty and only by selling his collection.
Smith was now a good "game". Probably in 1717 he married the London prima donna and soprano Catherine Tofts (approx. 1685–1755), who in turn was quite wealthy and had been in Venice since 1711. The son John, born in 1721, died in 1727, his tombstone is in the Chiesa dei Santi Apostoli . After Catherine Smith's death, Consul Smith married Elizabeth Murray, sister of the British Ambassador in Venice, 40 years his junior, at the age of eighty in 1757 . After his death she left Venice in 1778 and died in Bath in 1788 .
Smith as an arts sponsor
From 1720 his name appeared on the Venetian art scene. He had Giovanni Battista Pasquali run a book publisher that also dealt with banned books , for example by Voltaire . Pasquali received instructions from him to produce small print runs for enthusiasts. The reproduction of Boccaccio's Decameron commissioned by him is confusingly similar to the rare edition from 1527. In 1768 he had Andrea Palladio's "Quattro libri dell 'architettura" from 1570 reprinted. Smith himself was involved in the translation of the sixth edition of the 1741 Cyclopaedia of Ephraim Chambers involved into Italian, with the illustrations for this "Dictionnaire Universal Delle Arti e delle Scienze, ..." was Antonio Visentini commissioned. The work came out in 1748/1749 in nine volumes by Pasquali. Pasquali's publishing motto was "Litterarum felicitas".
Smith made the British aristocracy enthusiastic about vedute painting . He was Canaletto's agent between 1729 and 1735 and commissioned Antonio Visentini to do the engravings after pictures by Canaletto. Smith's brother John took care of the transfer of orders from Venice in London. Finally, in 1746, Canaletto went to London for several years with the help of the Smith brothers, where he won the Duke of Richmond as a patron. Rosalba Carriera received several verifiable commissions from Smith between 1723 and 1728, she left him with a self-portrait that now hangs in the Royal Collection. Smith collected pictures and engravings by Sebastiano Ricci and Marco Ricci .
Smith was Farinelli's theater agent during his multiple appearances in Venice between 1725 and 1734. To hear Farinelli and to engage him for the “ second opera academy ” planned with Johann Jacob Heidegger in London, Georg Friedrich Handel came to Venice for the carnival in 1729, “ Banker Smith ”served as his Italian postal address .
Smith sold his first collection of books in 1720 to Lord Sunderland , who bought them for the library at Blenheim Palace ; this collection was dispersed in the 19th century. In 1762 Smith sold his collection of books, manuscripts , gems , cameos , coins , engravings , drawings and paintings , including many works by Canaletto, to the young George III for £ 20,000. The books formed the core of the King's Library in the British Museum , the Royal Collection received the other treasures.
When he died he left behind a large collection of books and pictures that had been built up again, including a Stradivari violin from 1694, a harpsichord by Burkat Shudi and a bundle of music manuscripts by Johann Sebastian Bach , all between April 22, 1776 and Auctioned on April 9, 1789 at Christie's .
"Lack of space forbids listing all the famous books Smith owned."
Consul Smith
After Smith had already unsuccessfully sought the honorary office in 1716 and that of the British ambassador in Venice, Smith's appointment as British consul was announced in the London Gazette on March 24, 1744 , and he was this until the accession of George III in 1760.
Appropriately, on April 20, 1740, he bought the Palazzino on the Grand Canal , which he had been renting since 1709. In 1743 Visentini was commissioned to redesign the facade of the building in the style of Palladio , which lasted until 1750. Smith's villa in the Terraferma , which he had rented since 1726/27 and bought in 1731, was a half-day trip to Treviso on via Terraglio in Mogliano Veneto . He had to sell it to the Spanish ambassador in Venice in 1770 because of further financial difficulties. It has not been preserved.
Carlo Goldoni wrote the piece Il filosofo inglese with the main character of a "Jacobbe Monduill" for the carnival in 1754 and dedicated it to Smith: "All'illustrissimo Signor Giuseppe Smith Console per la nazione Britannica in Venezia".
Goethe 1786
“At last I have obtained the works of Palladio, not the original edition that I saw in Vicenza, the panels of which are cut in wood, but an exact copy, yes a facsimile in copper, arranged by an excellent man, the former English consul Smith in Venice. You have to give the English that they have long appreciated the good, and that they have a grandiose way of spreading it. "
Catherine and Joseph's grave was on the non-Catholic cemetery on the Lido . Johann Wolfgang von Goethe looked for it on his Italian trip .
“I found the grave of the noble Consul Smith and his first wives; I owe him my copy of Palladio and thanked him for it on his unconsecrated grave. And the grave is not only unconsecrated, but half-buried. The Lido can only be seen like a dune; the sand is carried there, driven back and forth by the wind, piled up, pushed everywhere. In less time you will hardly be able to find the rather elevated monument. "
The tombstone is now in the Anglican Church of St George on Campo San Vio in Dorsoduro, Venice .
literature
- Frances Vivian: The Consul Smith Collection: Masterpieces of Italian Drawing from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle. From Raffael to Canaletto . Hirmer, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-7774-5120-7 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Description of the Palazzo see Italian Wikipedia it: Palazzo Smith Mangilli Valmarana
- ↑ "If the age estimate in his death certificate is correct, then he was born around 1674", Frances Vivian: The Collection of Consul Smith , p. 11. From there all further information
- ↑ Denis Diderot's project of the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers from 1751 onwards was initially only planned as a translation by Chambers into French.
- ↑ Vivian, The Collection of Consul Smith , p. 18
- ↑ Handel's letter to Michael Michaelsen's brother-in-law, Venice, March 11, 1729
- ^ Vivian, The Collection of Consul Smith , p. 43
- ↑ the Pontebbana (SS13) is initially via Terraglio, see it: Terraglio and it: Strada statale 13 Pontebbana
- ^ Carlo Goldoni: Il filosofo inglese , at Pelagus
- ↑ Stephan Oswald: The German Protestant Congregation in the Republic of Venice , in: Uwe Israel (ed.): Protestants between Venice and Rome in the early modern times . Berlin: Akad.-Verl. 2013, p. 122
- ↑ see also it: Chiesa di Saint George and it: campo San Vio
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Smith, Joseph |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British art collector |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 1674 or 1682 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | England |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 6, 1770 |
| Place of death | Venice |