View of the Bacino di San Marco from the Punta della Dogana
The whole sweep of the Venetian Bacino — Doge's Palace, Piazzetta, San Giorgio — seen from the customs point at the mouth of the Grand Canal.
Venice
The painting shows a real, identified place that you can find today. The exact spot the artist worked from is not necessarily known.
View of the Bacino di San Marco from the Punta della Dogana — at a glance
- Artist
- Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal, 1697–1768)
- Year
- 1730s–1740s
- Movement
- Venetian view painting (veduta)
- Place
- The Bacino di San Marco, Venice, Italy
- Viewpoint
- The Punta della Dogana customs point — the panorama is unchanged and matchable
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Now at
- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and other collections
Overview
This is one of Canaletto's most comprehensive Venice panoramas, painted in the 1730s–40s: from the tip of land at the Punta della Dogana, where the Grand Canal meets the Giudecca Canal and the Bacino di San Marco, the view fans out across busy water to the Molo, the Piazzetta with its two columns, the pink façade of the Doge's Palace, the Campanile and the domes of San Marco, and, at the right, the island of San Giorgio Maggiore. It is oil on canvas; a large version is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Where was View of the Bacino di San Marco from the Punta della Dogana painted?
Scholarship The Punta della Dogana is the triangular point of the Dorsoduro district, occupied by the seventeenth-century customs house (Dogana da Mar) with its tower and golden weathervane of Fortune; it is now a contemporary-art museum. The panorama from it — palace, Piazzetta, Campanile, San Giorgio — is one of the most stable views in Venice and can be matched almost exactly from the point today, allowing for Canaletto's slight widening of the angle.
What is in the painting?
The wide Bacino fills the foreground, crowded with gondolas, sailing barges, ceremonial boats and larger ships at anchor. Across the water, the long Molo waterfront: the Doge's Palace and its arcades, the two granite columns of the Piazzetta, the Library, the Campanile, the domes of the Basilica behind. To the right, San Giorgio Maggiore on its island. A high, luminous sky with soft cloud.
Look closely
The two Piazzetta columns
The granite columns of Saint Mark and Saint Theodore on the Molo, framing the entrance to the square.
The Doge's Palace
The long pink-and-white arcaded façade along the Molo waterfront.
San Giorgio Maggiore
Palladio's island church on the right, across the water.
The crowded Bacino
Gondolas, barges, ceremonial craft and anchored ships fill the foreground.
Analysis
Composition and technique
An extremely wide, low panorama with the whole ceremonial waterfront of Venice ranged across the far side.
Scholarship Canaletto opens the angle far wider than the eye takes in so the entire sequence of famous buildings fits one canvas, and fills the foreground with shipping to give scale and Venetian life. The drawing is crisp, the light clear and even — the polished manner made for Grand Tour buyers.
History & provenance
Versions are in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and other collections.
Sources
- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston / National Gallery of Art, Washington — collection entries for Canaletto, ‘The Bacino di San Marco from the Punta della Dogana’
- J. G. Links, ‘Canaletto’ (Phaidon)
Related paintings
The Entrance to the Grand Canal, Venice
1730
Canaletto's companion view from the other side, toward the Salute and the Dogana.
The Doge's Palace Seen from San Giorgio Maggiore
1908
Monet dissolving a nearby view into colour, 170 years later.
St Mark's Body Brought to Venice
1564
Tintoretto's storm-emptied Piazza San Marco — the same square, transformed.
More by Canaletto
The Stonemason's Yard
The Entrance to the Grand Canal, Venice
Arrival of the French Ambassador in Venice
A View of Walton Bridge
Also connected to Venice
