Les deux maîtres de Venise

Today we visited the beautiful Musée Jacquemart-André for an exhibition of paintings of Venice by Antonio Canal (called Canaletto) and Francesco Guardi.  The Musée is housed in a glorious mansion in the 8th arrondissement, which was the private home of Édouard André and Nélie Jacquemart and was built to display the art they collected during their lifetimes.  The exhibition highlighted the different styles of the painters, hanging works of the same view by each of them side by side.  For me, I marvelled at how little the views of San Marco and the Canal have changed since the time of these painters (1700s), and how the paintings capture the earthy rose and sandy hues of the buildings and the movement of the canal traffic in a way that modern photographs do not.

In the rear courtyard of the Musée I could hardly ignore those majestic lions...