Lucio Fontana’s Golden Vision of St Mark’s Square Comes to Auction After Four Decades in One Family

Christie’s is bringing Lucio Fontana’s Concetto Spaziale, Mezzogiorno in Piazza S. Marco to auction for the first time, placing an estimate of €5.5 million to €7.5 million on the 1961 work. The painting belongs to the artist’s small Venezia series and has remained in the same family collection for more than four decades.

The Venezia series was unusually concentrated

Fontana produced only 22 works in the Venezia series, using the city as a starting point without returning to conventional landscape painting. Mezzogiorno in Piazza S. Marco transforms the visual memory of Venice into a gold surface punctured and shaped through his spatial language.

That scarcity gives the work a different status from more familiar examples of Fontana’s cut canvases. Collectors are not simply buying a recognisable gesture; they are looking at a tightly defined moment when a specific city prompted a distinct body of work.

Gold connects the painting with St Mark’s mosaics

The golden surface and circular forms evoke the light and mosaic interiors associated with St Mark’s Basilica without describing the building literally. Perforations interrupt the surface, turning the painting into an object that plays with light rather than a flat image of a place.

For collectors who know Venice well, the appeal lies in recognition without illustration. The work carries atmosphere and material memory while remaining unmistakably Fontana, allowing the city to be felt through colour, texture and space instead of conventional perspective.

Provenance adds to the sense of rarity

The painting was originally acquired by Paolo Marinotti and has remained within the same family collection for more than forty years. Christie’s says it has been publicly exhibited only three times, giving the auction a genuine sense of re-emergence.

Long-held works often attract particular attention because the market has had little opportunity to establish a recent price history. Provenance and condition therefore become central to the conversation, especially when an object belongs to a tightly limited series.

The sale places Venice inside the Paris season

The work is scheduled for Christie’s Thinking Italian sale in Paris on 22 October, following a pre-sale presentation in Milan. That route places the painting within a broader European collecting calendar rather than isolating it in an Italian-only context.

For private collectors, this movement between Milan and Paris can make previewing easier around other appointments. It also reinforces how major works now travel through an international network of fairs, auctions and private viewings before reaching the saleroom.

Official sources: press.christies.com.