of Michele Marieschi (1710-1743), Canaletto’s  most able competitor in the production of Venetian  view paintings until his premature death, and they  were accepted as such by Mario Manzelli, judging  from photographs. Manzelli indeed considered the  first painting to be the prototype ‘of a series of ten  versions of the same subject, with slight variations  of detail’; he attributed the other nine versions  to Marieschi’s pupil Francesco Albotto, including  paintings in the Museo del Castello Sforzesco, Milan,  and with Frost & Reed, London, in 1970. To those  may be added a version which differs in some details  from all the others. The A. G. Leventis Foundation  paintings (opposite and p. 159) are, however,  omitted from Marieschi’s oeuvre by the authors  of the other recent catalogues of his work, Ralph  Toledano and Filippo Pedrocco, and on qualitative  grounds this verdict is unquestionably correct.  Although he was relatively prolific given the  brevity of his activity, Marieschi’s paintings are of  a consistently high standard, and his distinctive  touch is not evident here. Eugenia Bianchi has  stated that the first composition reflects a lost  work by Marieschi, which seems very plausible.  The shortcomings of the pendant are even  more apparent, as in this case a version entirely  characteristic of Marieschi is known, admittedly  with some differences, notably the figures, which  from photographs seem to have been supplied  by Marieschi’s frequent collaborator Francesco  Simonini (1686 – after 1753). There is also a smaller  variant by Marieschi, with a tower crowning the  group of buildings and two sailing boats.      

Marieschi’s work gave rise to a considerable body  of imitations, possibly at least in part because, of  very humble origins and with a picture dealer as  a father-in-law, he worked in the Venetian artistic  community in a way that many of his competitors,  such as the more patrician Canal family, did not.  The best of these are generally presumed to be the  work of Albotto, who was living in Marieschi’s house  before the latter’s marriage in November 1737 and  who married his master’s widow in 1744. According  to Pierre-Jean Mariette, he became known as  ‘the second Marieschi’,7 but only one certain work  is known, a view of The Molo from the Bacino di San  Marco with a signature or inscription on the reverse  recorded as F. Albotto F. in Cale di Ca’ Loredan  S. Luca.8 That painting is not among the finer Marieschi  imitations, some of which, notably some  views on the Grand Canal, are close enough to the  master’s style to make differentiation more problematical.  In the absence of further certain works,  it is obviously impossible to establish the qualitative  boundaries of Albotto’s output, and it should  be noted that his career was only slightly longer  than his master’s. Furthermore, capriccios by the  hand generally presumed to be Albotto’s were often  closely imitated by his associate known as ‘The  Master of the Langmatt Foundation Views’, who  was active in Venice from the 1740s to the 1770s.  Thus, any attribution to Albotto should be made  with reservations, but similarities between the  Leventis Collection paintings and works generally  presumed to be by Albotto make the attribution at  least probable.