A Regatta on the Grand Canal

Around 1740 Canaletto was doing the best business of his life, and pictures like this were the reason. Wealthy foreigners on the Grand Tour, the British above all, wanted a grand souvenir of Venice, and he sold to them through Joseph Smith, the British consul in the city. The scene is a real event, the regatta, a gondola race held each winter down the Grand Canal. At the bend of the canal stands the macchina, a temporary floating pavilion, ornately carved, from which the winners were handed their prizes. The good years did not last. When war across Europe in the 1740s kept the British travelers at home, his market thinned and he moved to London to follow his buyers, staying the better part of ten years. The slender race boats are already pulling ahead of the crowd of gondolas.