Artwork Information
Ritorno del Bucintoro al molo vicino al Palazzo Ducale
Canaletto
1727-1729
In questa scena brulicante, Canaletto cattura il caos assoluto e la grandezza del giorno più importante di Venezia. Il Bucintoro dorato, la massiccia chiatta di stato del Doge, sta tornando dalla cerimonia dello «Sposalizio del Mare», circondato da uno sciame frenetico di gondole e spettatori eager. Famoso per la sua precisione architettonica puntigliosa, Canaletto probabilmente utilizzò una camera oscura per fissare perfettamente la prospettiva del Palazzo Ducale e del Campanile. È un'istantanea perfetta dello sfarfo veneziano del XVIII secolo, che i turisti britannici in Grand Tour acquistavano come souvenir supremo.
Interpretation Content
October 13 marks the anniversary of Canaletto's death. Born in Venice in 1697 and buried there in 1768, he earned fame for his scrupulously accurate city views and stands as the most celebrated landscape painter of eighteenth-century Venice.
Painted around 1727–1729, this canvas shows the Doge returning aboard the golden state barge, the Bucintoro, to the pier of the Palazzo Ducale after the Ascension Day ceremony of the Marriage of the Sea. Gondolas press in from every side, the crowd clamours, and splendour and confusion merge into a single spectacle.
The Palazzo Ducale, the campanile and the lagoon form the stage; the perspective is rigorously constructed, perhaps with the aid of a camera obscura. Canaletto weaves architecture, vessels, shimmering water and thronging figures into a theatre upon the water, recording both the rituals and the commercial vitality of the Republic.
His Venice is at once a real city and an imagined one for European travellers. British Grand Tourists competed to acquire his paintings as souvenirs, spreading the city's fame far beyond the lagoon. Looking again at this picture on the anniversary of his death, one sees with particular clarity how he fixed in light and water the glory and the everyday life of the maritime Republic.