The Ponte Vecchio, Florence

The bridge in the middle distance is the Ponte Vecchio, rebuilt in stone in 1345 after a flood of the Arno had destroyed the one before it. The little houses crowded along it are shops. In 1593 Grand Duke Ferdinando I de' Medici moved out the butchers who worked there and gave the bridge to goldsmiths, and jewellers still trade on it today. Along the top of the shops runs the covered passage Giorgio Vasari built in 1565, so that the Medici could walk from their government offices at the Uffizi to their palace across the river without setting foot in the street.

In the foreground two boatmen pole a small boat across the water. The canvas once belonged to Götz Martius in Kiel, in northern Germany, and the museum bought it from the Bachstitz Gallery in The Hague in 1925. Older references give it to Bellotto himself. Boston now gives it to his circle and dates it anywhere from 1740 to 1780.