Grand Canal from Palazzo Balbi towards the Rialto

In the 1720s Venice had stopped being a great sea power and had become something else — a place foreigners came to look at. Wealthy young men on the Grand Tour wanted a souvenir of the light on the water, and painters learned to supply it. Canaletto was about 25 when he made this view, looking up the Grand Canal from the Palazzo Balbi toward the distant Rialto bridge. It belonged to a set of four such canvases; two hang here in Venice today, the other two are in Madrid. He has caught the working canal, gondolas and cargo boats crossing in front of the pale palace fronts, the whole scene held under a wide Venetian sky.