Procession of Gondolas in the Bacino di San Marco

Venice staged two great welcomes in 1782. In January the heir to the Russian throne, Grand Duke Paul, arrived with his wife, travelling as the Counts of the North, and in May Pope Pius VI stopped in the city on his way back from Vienna. The Venetian state paid Francesco Guardi to record both visits, six canvases for the Russian guests and four for the pope. This painting is not one of them. The museum dates it to around 1782 and suggests the gondolas may be escorting an arriving dignitary, perhaps the pope himself, although nothing in the picture names him. Three of the boats are covered in gold, warships out in the basin of San Marco fire their guns in salute, and on the left the sun catches the façade of San Giorgio Maggiore, Palladio's church on its own island across the water. The canvas had a companion of the same size, a festival of the Bucintoro, the state barge of the doges, which is now in Copenhagen. Both once belonged to an English collector, a Captain Harvey, and they were sold separately in the early 1900s. Boston bought this one from a Paris dealer in 1911.