Canaletto, Venice: The Piazza San Marco

Like its companion picture, this work shows a view of the Piazza San Marco from just inside the colonnade which ran along three sides of the square. Here, we stand beneath the Procuratie Nuove, which was built between 1580 and 1640 to house the procurators, or caretakers, of San Marco; its ground floor consists of an arcade of 52 stone arches. Although he was painting one of Venice’s most famous sights, Canaletto took liberties with the architecture to produce a dramatic composition, enlarging the size of the archway and removing one of the pillars so we can see both the piazza and down the arcade.

We, like the small group of men in front of us, are positioned against the pillar of an archway. The man seated to the left is doing the talking while his companion listens intently – they may be looking up at something behind us, perhaps the arch itself. A dog sits faithfully at their feet. Another man, wearing a vivid green cloak and holding a cup and saucer daintily, seems to be listening in on their conversation. Behind him is the famous coffee house, Caffè Florian, a well-known centre of social life during Canaletto’s time (it remains so today). Along the arcade, people sit on benches outside shops and cafes, looking out across the square; the sunlight streams through the archways and shadows stretch across the floor. Nearby, we can see street vendors with baskets of goods, idle dogs and three men wearing long cloaks.

A drawing showing just the three men and the dog (British Museum, London) is one of very few studies of people by Canaletto that survive. He used pen to describe the contours of the forms, and the cloak of the standing figure in particular – a detail that can also be seen in this painting. Black outlines shape the breeches worn by the seated figures, while strokes of yellow paint on the sleeves and coats give them a lively texture. Their faces, too, are made up of highlights applied freely to the forehead, cheeks, nose and chin.

Canaletto experimented with a form of visual trickery, arranging the vertical lines of particular architectural features – the pillar of the arch and the column on its outer edge with the campanile (bell tower) beyond, for example – to create an unusual and interesting composition. The flag poles in front of the Basilica di San Marco, the city’s grandest church, and the turrets on its facade create more vertical lines, while the steeply angled, diagonal lines of the colonnade draw our eye across rather than up. The figures at the base of the campanile and the far end of the arcade, made up of tiny flicks and dots of paint, help to create an impression of the recession of space. As always with Canaletto, the view is entirely convincing.