Lot 30: MANUEL RAMÍREZ IBÁNEZ

SPANISH, 1856-1925
FEAST DAY IN VENICE

26 3/4 by 19 1/4 in. 68 by 49 cm

signed M Ramirez (lower left)

oil on canvas

NOTE

The Piazza San Marco, with its Byzantine facades, campanile tower and lion sculpture, is one of the most famous squares in the world. The Santa Maria della Salute Church, with its enormous dome built in the sixteenth century to thank the Virgin for sparing Venice from the Plague, is another of this ancient cities best-known features.

But Manuel Ramírez Ibáñez uses these treasured sites as only a distant backdrop to the main action of this charming scene. Instead, the eye is drawn to the whimsical group of beautiful women, talking and laughing at café tables. In the foreground, the carefree nature of their concerns seems underscored by the flowers strewn on the ground and the large floating bubbles dotting the scene. Placed in one of the best known and most beautiful settings in Venice, the beauty of these elegantly dressed denizens of the Belle Epoque still manages to take center stage.