The Molo Looking West

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The Molo Looking West: Canaletto

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Canaletto Oil Painting - The Molo Looking West

Keywords: Molo, Looking, West

Work Overview: The Molo Looking West
Canaletto
Date: 1730; Venice, Italy *
Style: Baroque
Genre: veduta
Media: oil, canvas
Dimensions: 55 x 102 cm
Location: Private Collection

This work and its companion picture (Riva degli Schiavoni: Looking East, in the same collection) were painted for Samuel Hill, who came from Staffordshire. They are of considerable interest as accomplished view paintings of the early 1730s, but are also significant because in the correspondence related to their commission the agent Joseph Smith for the first time mentions Canaletto's name in a letter dated 17 July 1730 to Hill. In the letter Smith gives the impression that Canaletto was very popular and somewhat egotistical; his popularity should not be doubted, but the question of his character needs to be approached with caution.

The view is from roughly the same point as the other view of the Molo (RL 7542), and is essentially identical in size and style, but looking in the opposite direction. Here too Canaletto enlarged the column, this time that of San Teodoro, relative to buildings beyond - the Libreria, followed by the Zecca (the mint of Venice), then the broad staircase of the Ponte della Pescaria, the site of a fishmarket whose awnings Canaletto indicated with a series of horizontal scribbles. Then comes the Granai di Terranova, a huge brick building erected in the fourteenth century as the state granaries, demolished during the Napoleonic occupation and replaced by gardens to give a view from the end of Napoleon’s intended palace. Next are the buildings of the Fontegheto della Farina, and finally the mouth of the Grand Canal, including the tower of Palazzo Venier delle Torreselle.

Canaletto painted variants of this view several times, usually as pendants to the views east along the Molo. All the paintings extend the view to the left to include Santa Maria della Salute, and that church appears in a rapid sketch in Philadelphia that seems to be preliminary to the present drawing, though with a lower viewpoint and the buildings on the right in more dramatic perspective. The Philadelphia sketch is virtually identical in size and style to a sketch of the Piazzetta dated 1729 by the artist (private collection), and it is very likely that the same applies to the present drawing.

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Canaletto

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