View of the Grand Canal

Bernardo Bellotto (3:45) J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California, Producer, Antenna Audio, Inc. &
Joel Snyder. About 1740. Oil on canvas, 53 1/4 inches high by 91 1/4 inches wide.

A panoramic view of activity on Venice 's Grand Canal unfolds on a canvas stretching along an entire wall,
eight feet across and more than four feet high. It is a sunny afternoon. An almost cloudless blue sky hovers
above the distant view of a bay where gondolas cluster about a tall-masted sailing ship at anchor. A broad,
placid canal punctuated with river traffic winds its way from that harbor into the foreground.

On the left bank: the mottled brown faade of a three-story stone house at the water's edge. Its smooth corner
blocks glisten in the sun beside rough brickwork exposed by crumbling plaster. Four arched windows,
framed by columns, rise double the height of a person on each of two upper floors, their dark shutters closed
against the brilliant light. A bare-shouldered young woman in a red gown rests her forearms on a second
floor balcony, gazing out on the canal. Below, two men stand in conversation on the pavement before the
house, and nearby a woman wrapped in a shawl waits with a little boy at the edge of a boat slip as three
gondoliers glide toward her. Other gondolas traverse the green and blue waters with passengers and goods.

Along the right bank, in the foreground, a narrow lane is in the shadow of a dingy row of houses. Behind
them, a monastery rises in the sun. Further along, an open space, the piazza of a baroque church whose lofty
domes and bell tower dart into the sky. Its octagonal roof lines are embellished with dozens of full-length
statues. A churchman in red robes and a white skull cap passes a priest on the piazza, near to where the
pavement descends by broad steps to a boat landing at the water's edge. Men and women stroll or gather on
an adjacent square before a four-story public building made of smooth sand-colored stone. The canal then
passes behind a long low building where sailing sloops unload their wares. Reflecting all on its barely
rippled surface, the canal bends to the right and vanishes behind an array of roofs, steeples and masts toward
the harbor where ships, city, and sky meet.

The label reads: Bellotto's precocious talent was fostered in the studio of his uncle, Canaletto. By 1738, only
three years after joining the shop, the seventeen-year-old Bellotto was collaborating with Canaletto as an
independent master, which he continued to do until 1742. They produced numerous views of Venice for the
tourists stopping there on their grand tour of Europe . This one is known in at least a dozen versions by both
artists.