Rio dei Mendicanti, Venice

The view this panel repeats is a very small picture by Francesco Guardi, a strip of Venice painted on a piece of wood about 19 centimetres by 15. It shows the Rio dei Mendicanti, the canal that runs past the Dominican convent of Santi Giovanni e Paolo towards the northern edge of the city, with a bridge and gondolas on the water. Guardi's panel belonged to Count Guglielmo Lochis of Bergamo and has been in that city's Accademia Carrara since 1866. The art historian Antonio Morassi listed it in his catalogue of the Guardi brothers' work in 1973.

The Boston panel follows it closely even in size, 19.3 by 13.7 centimetres. The museum catalogues it as a copy after Guardi by an unknown hand and gives it no date. It came in 1926 with the bequest of the Boston collector William Sturgis Bigelow, and the only photograph of it available here is black and white.