The exhibition EBLOUISSANTE VENISE! Venise, les arts et l’Europe au XVIIIe siècle [Magnificent Venice! Venice: Europe and the Arts in the 18th Century] presents two paintings by Francesco Guardi on loan from the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum. Taking place at the Grand Palais in Paris from 26 September 2018 to 21 January 2019, the exhibition will later move to the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia – Palazzo Ducale in Venice from 23 February to 9 June 2019.

This exhibition brings together a selection of the most representative works of European artists who lived and worked in Venice at the end of the 18th century. Francesco Guardi (1712–1793), himself a Venetian, was one of the most outstanding painters of the time.

Both of Guardi’s paintings, made around the year 1775, evoke the city’s atmosphere in all its liveliness, colour and movement. In The Feast of the Ascension in St Mark’s Square – which was used as the cover image of the exhibition catalogue – St Mark’s Square is decorated for the most sumptuous of Venice’s festivals, the Festa della Sensa. In turn, Regatta on the Grand Canal represents the Grand Canal as seen from Ca’Foscari during a regatta.