Canaletto - Venice, Santa Maria della Salute [c.1740]

Canaletto - Venice, Santa Maria della Salute [c.1740], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

A bird's eye view is to a degree imaginary, even if the scene is real, and this view is taken from high above the Grand Canal and the landing stage at Santa Maria della Salute. The panorama embraces the entrance to the canal in the direction of the bacino, with, at the right, the façade and dome of the church, one of the most splendid sights that Venice affords. The Salute church was designed by Baldassare Longhena (1598–1682) and built beginning in 1631, in thanksgiving for the deliverance of the city from the virulent plague of the previous year. Beyond is the façade of the Seminario Patriarcale and further along the tower of the Dogana, or Customs House, seen above warehouse roofs. At the left on the waterfront are some of the most important buildings in Venice: the mint, the library, one of the columns in the Piazzetta, Palazzo Ducale, and the prison, with the Riva degli Schiavoni stretching in a gentle curve toward the right. In the foreground are gondolas; beyond, large numbers of ocean-going ships, their rigging silhouetted against the sky. 

The scene, compressed in depth and painted with maximum clarity in a clear light with slanting shadows, is probably from about 1740. Canaletto's earliest picture of the canal and the Salute from the west is ten or twelve years earlier, while his largest and most famous canvas of this subject dates to 1744 and is in the British royal collection.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 47.6 x 79.4 cm]