Capriccio: a Palladian Design for the Rialto Bridge, with Buildings at Vicenza

Venice argued for decades about how to replace the old wooden bridge at the Rialto. Andrea Palladio offered a design with classical arcades and temple fronts. The Senate turned it down, and in 1591 the city got instead the single stone arch that still stands. Canaletto painted the outcome that never happened. He set Palladio's rejected bridge across a Venetian waterway and placed beside it two buildings the architect really did put up in Vicenza, the Basilica and the Palazzo Chiericati. There was a market for this kind of invention. Francesco Algarotti, a Venetian writer and collector who advised princes on what to buy, championed views improved by architecture that existed only on paper, and the painting came down through his heirs until 1825, when Marie Louise, then ruling Parma, bought it for the city. Under the imaginary bridge Canaletto painted the ordinary traffic of the lagoon, gondolas and loaded barges going about their day.