Capriccio with Gothic Building and Obelisk

A Gothic building and a tall obelisk stand side by side here, two things you would never really find together, which is exactly the point of a capriccio. Marieschi assembled invented architecture into a scene that still feels unmistakably Venetian. Let the eye travel back past the buildings and the solid ground opens into lagoon, the paint thinning toward the horizon until you meet a small ferry gondola almost lost in the haze. That far stretch of water is the one thing in the picture true to the real city. He painted it around 1741 as the companion to a second capriccio of the same size, that one gathered around a ruined classical arch.