Two facets of Canaletto’s work are distinct from the views of Venice for which he is chiefly famous: imaginary compositions in which references to the city and the lagoon are combined with motifs from the Italian terra firma, and “estate views” painted during the artist’s visit in and after 1746 to England. The former are traditionally assigned to a period when foreign visitors to Venice and their commissions, upon which Canaletto had depended, were interrupted owing to the outbreak, in 1741, of the War of the Austrian Succession. Travel on the continent became difficult. At the time or a little earlier, with his nephew Bernardo Bellotto, Canaletto visited the Brenta Canal and Padua. He also made a number of etchings, some with imaginary subjects, that relate generically to the present picture. The composition exists in two other versions belonging to the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence (see fig. 1 above), and the Gemaldegalerie, Berlin (fig. 2). All are smaller than most of Canaletto’s paintings and many of his drawings. Perhaps they were intended for quick sale in the local art market.
The Met's canvas shows a pedimented classical sarcophagus resting on a high platform sheltered under a roof supported by antique columns, an improbable, not to say impossible, arrangement. There is a coat of arms, never meant to be read, on the sarcophagus. The decrepitude of the structure is suggested by some breaks and by a decorative, well-distributed array of weeds and vines silhouetted against the rosy evening sky. In the foreground to the right is an immense fragment or block from an antique cornice. It is unrelated to the dark wall, sheltering three spires that are not Venetian in form. To the left are the mast and sail of a ship (why is the sail raised if the ship is aground?) and a small church or hut among cypress trees, together with a bridge too spindly and broken down to be a viable crossing. At the center in shallow water a standing oarsman poles a typically Venetian vessel, or perhaps he pushes on his pole to release it from the mud. On the bridge a man in a brown coat and a tricorne hat contemplates the view. Red accents are provided by the hats of several of the figures. The scale of the various architectural elements is deliberately disproportionate.
First recorded in a 1952 London auction, The Met's picture then had a pendant. Although it is now unlocated, the subject is known to be the same as that of the pendant to the picture in the Uffizi. The companion view—of a house, a church behind it, and a more distant tower by a lagoon—was engraved in Venice by Fabio Berardi (Siena 1728–1788 Venice) as one of a set of four and is inscribed “Anto. Canaletto Pinx., Berardi Scul. Appo Wagner Vena. C. P. E. S. no. 62.2”. It is more or less impossible that Berardi’s undated, highly accomplished prints were made as early as 1746, which leaves a proposal to assign the paintings to the early 1740s open to doubt. A drawing belonging to The Metropolitan Museum (
43.61) is a variation of the second composition and was doubtless made by Canaletto after his return from England. The motifs are arranged in the same sense as the Berardi engraving.
Katharine Baetjer 2018
