Piazza San Marco

Francesco Guardi

late 1760s · Oil on canvas · European Paintings

This view can be compared to Canaletto’s picture of the same location painted forty years prior. Guardi’s technique is far looser and less adherent to the geometric ordering of the square, its pavement, and facades. Guardi employs a playful, illusionistic device by signing his name in the miniature canvas being carried by the man at lower right. It appears to depict something otherwise absent in this view of San Marco: gondolas and the choppy water of Venice’s famous canals.

Artist

Francesco Guardi

Date

late 1760s

Medium

Oil on canvas

Department

European Paintings

Credit line

Bequest of Mary Stillman Harkness, 1950