Piazza San Marco, Venice (c. 1740): Art, History and Details

Piazza San Marco, Venice (c. 1740) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Bernardo Bellotto (Italian, 1721–1780).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This view of the Piazza San Marco, Venice shows Bellotto's devotion to faithful observation. At the left is the church of St. Mark with the Doge's Palace just beyond, leading to the lagoon. Vertically dividing the canvas is the campanile (bell tower) with the Procuratie Nuove (a government building) extending to the right. At the extreme right, opposite St. Mark's, is the façade of the church of San Geminiano which was removed in the 19th century by Napoleon. The two wings of the Procuratie were then joined across the west end of the piazza. Bernardo Bellotto was the nephew and student of Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal, 1697–1768) who ran one of the most productive painting workshops in Italy. Like his uncle, Bellotto specialized in vedute (views) of Italy, especially Venice, which were purchased avidly by British aristocrats traveling on the Grand Tour. Bellotto later worked for the courts of Dresden, Vienna, Warsaw, and Munich, painting topographical and imaginary views of those cities.

Object facts

• Title: Piazza San Marco, Venice
• Date: c. 1740
• Creator attribution: Bernardo Bellotto (Italian, 1721–1780)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 164.5 x 264 x 12 cm (64 3/4 x 103 15/16 x 4 3/4 in.); Unframed: 136.2 x 232.5 cm (53 5/8 x 91 9/16 in.)
• Collection: P - Italian 18th Century
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1962.169

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Bellotti, Pietro, Canaletto, and Bożena Anna Kowalczyk. Bellotto and Canaletto: Wonder and Light. 2016. catalogue number 15
• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Recent Acquisition Press Release,” July 20, 1962, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Recent Acquisition Press Release,” July 25, 1962, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.