While the sun has gone away - L'eclissi di sole a Venezia dell'8 luglio 1842, by Ippolito Caffi, 1842

 

A total solar eclipse occurred on 8 July 1842. The artist witnessed it and, soon after, wrote of the experience to his friend and fellow artist Antonio Tessari:

E voi, voi avete il coraggio di dimandarmi quale impressione mi ha prodotto sull’animo l’Eclissi? Io sentii così fortemente, per effetto di quella cosa, che stetti tre quattro giorni senza potermi tranquillizzare, senza potermi occupare nell’arte. L’assunto dell’eclissi per dipingere un quadro mi parve oltremodo difficile e sublime, perciò stetti vari giorni incerto nell’impresa: ma poscia incoraggiato da tutta Venezia…ho cominciato un quadro, largo cinque piedi, alto tre, che credo di poter terminare per la prossima esposizione.

(And you, do you have the courage to ask me what impression the Eclipse produced on my soul? I felt so strongly, as a result of that thing, that I stayed three or four days without being able to calm down, without being able to occupy myself in art. To take on the eclipse in order to paint a picture seemed extremely difficult and sublime to me, so I was uncertain about the undertaking for several days: but later encouraged by all of Venice ... I started a picture, five feet wide, three feet high, which I think I can finish for the next exhibition.)

*

Ippolito Caffi (16 October 1809, Belluno - 20 July 1866, Adriatic Sea near the Croatian island of Vis), Italian painter of architectural subjects and seascapes or urban vedute.* Born in the Veneto, his first works were produced at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia; by 1830, he had won awards for his work there. He subsequently moved to Rome, where he gained notice with his treatise on perspective, as well as by his investigations into Roman archaeology. In 1843 he visited Greece and the Near East. The painting that that first garnered widespread praise was his "Carnival at Venice", which was exhibited at Paris in 1846, and admired for its brilliant effects of light. He joined the revolutionary movement against the Austrian occupation in 1848 and was forced to flee into Piedmont; he wasn't able to return to Venice until 1859. Later, his aim of creating a visual commemoration of the first Italian naval engagement was frustrated when the ship on which he was traveling, the ironclad Re d' Italia**, was rammed and sunk at the hands of the Austro-Venetian fleet at the battle of Lissa; he drowned along with the ship's captain and four hundred of its crew.

* A veduta (Italian for "view"; plural vedute) is a highly detailed, usually large-scale painting or print of a cityscape or other vista. The painters of vedute - most famously, the likes of Canaletto and his nephew Bellotto, Pannini, and the Guardi family - are referred to as vedutisti.

** The Re d'Italia (King of Italy) was the lead ship of the two armored frigates built in the United States for the Italian Royal Navy. (The second ship, the Re di Portogallo - King of Portugal - was also rammed in the battle, but survived until being scrapped in 1875.) The two frigates were armed with a battery of thirty-eight guns in a broadside arrangement and were protected with 120 millimeters (4.7 in) of wrought iron plating. Laid down at the William H. Webb Shipyard in New York in November 1861, she was launched in April 1863, and completed a year later in September 1864. 

(The main reason I'm relaying this final bit of totally-unrelated-to-the-painting information is because of how surprised I was to find that these ships were being built in the United States... right in the midst of the American Civil War! You'd think that the Union's material resources - or even the ironclad ships, themselves - might have been better employed at winning our war...?)