Der Bucintoro

Once a year, on Ascension Day, the ruler of Venice sailed out into the lagoon on a gilded state galley called the Bucintoro, dropped a gold ring into the water, and declared the city married to the sea. The rite went back to a naval victory in the year 998, and it was still going strong when Canaletto painted this around 1745. He sold views like it to the English gentlemen passing through on the Grand Tour, who wanted a piece of Venice to take home. There is a way to date the picture. The top of the great bell tower of San Marco is shown jagged and broken, because lightning had struck it in 1745, the year Canaletto set down this scene of the doge's galley riding at the waterfront.