Il rio dei Mendicanti

This is early Canaletto, painted around 1723, years before the bright holiday Venice that English visitors bought by the crateful. The canal is the Rio dei Mendicanti, which runs from the northern quays down towards the square of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, and it takes its name from San Lazzaro dei Mendicanti, the hospital the city ran for its beggars and its sick. He painted the poor working edge of it, bare brick and worn plaster rather than a ceremonial front, and on a canvas two metres wide, larger than most of the views he later made for the tourist trade. In 1725 an agent buying pictures for a collector in Lucca wrote back that this young painter was like Carlevaris, the established view painter of the city, except that in his pictures you could see the sun shining.