The Bucintoro at the Molo on Ascension Day

The gilded galley moored at the Molo was still fairly new when Canaletto painted it, around 1740. Venice had built it in the Arsenal between 1722 and 1728, and it first sailed in 1729, the last of the state barges that carried the doge out to San Nicolò on the Lido each Ascension Day for the ceremony that wedded the city to the sea. The sculptor Antonio Corradini covered it with carving, with a towering figure of Justice at the bow. Canaletto sets the scene from a central viewpoint facing the Doge's Palace, and the gallery notes how loose and yet precise his brushwork is in the small details. The ship did not long outlive the Republic. Venice fell to the French in 1797, and in 1798 the galley's upper works were burnt to recover the gold. The Austrians later armed the bare hull with cannon to guard the entrance to the lagoon, and in 1824 it was broken up in the Arsenal where it had been built.