Piazza San Marco Looking East from the North-West Corner

This small canvas, from about 1758, puts you in the shade of an arcade at the western end of Piazza San Marco, looking east through one tall arch. The domes of the basilica fill the far end of the square, and the bell tower rises on the right. Canaletto's earlier views of Venice mostly look across open water or wide squares. Here he framed the scene with architecture instead, and stretched the perspective so the lines of the paving run hard towards the church, while the distant crowd is little more than dots and flicks of paint. Nearer to you, a trader crouches over his baskets as a gentleman stands watching, with a small dog close by, and a man peers out from behind a pillar. The National Gallery also owns its companion, painted around 1756 from inside the colonnade of the Procuratie Nuove on the south side of the square. The collector George Salting bought both in 1886.