Venice, Piazzetta

The winged lion on the left-hand column had been to Paris and back. French troops carried it off in 1797, when Bonaparte's Italian campaign ended the old Venetian Republic, and from 1804 it stood on a fountain in front of the Invalides. When it was taken down in October 1815, a rope broke and the bronze shattered into about 20 pieces. Repaired in Venice, it was back in place in April 1816. Corot grew up in Paris in those years. In 1834, on his second journey to Italy, he set up in the Piazzetta and painted this view on paper, later laid down on canvas. The arcades of the Doge's Palace close the left side, Saint Theodore stands on the other pillar, and across the water rises San Giorgio Maggiore. At the lower right he wrote a single word, Venise.