Fonteghetto della Farina, Venice

The plain building with the arched doorway, a short walk from Saint Mark's Square, was a flour store. Venice put it up in 1492 as a public warehouse, the Fonteghetto della Farina, where flour for the city's bread was kept and sold. Canaletto painted it around 1735 as a working corner of the waterfront, a few figures on the quay and boats moored at the mouth of the Grand Canal. About 20 years later the building took on a second job. From 1756 its upper floor housed the city's new academy of painting and sculpture, while flour went on being sold downstairs, so the students drew from models above the dust and noise of the market. The academy stayed until 1877. The painting spent a long stretch in Germany, in the collection of the Dukes of Anhalt-Dessau, who sold it in 1928, and it reached Boston as an anonymous gift in the 1950s. The building still stands on the quay, and today it houses the Venetian harbour authority.