Detail of Piazza San Marco by Canaletto in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 2020

Piazza San Marco
late 1720s


Object Details

Artist: Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal) (Italian, Venice 1697–1768 Venice)

Date: late 1720s

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 27 x 44 1/4 in. (68.6 x 112.4 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Purchase, Mrs. Charles Wrightsman Gift, 1988

Accession Number: 1988.162


The most celebrated view painter of eighteenth-century Venice, Canaletto was particularly popular with British visitors to the city. This wonderfully fresh and well-preserved canvas shows Piazza San Marco. Canaletto reduced the number of windows in the bell tower and extended the height of the flagstaffs, but otherwise he took few liberties with the cityscape. In fact, this painting can be situated among the artist’s other views of the square because of his meticulous documentation of various stages in the laying of its pavement between 1725 and 1727.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/435839