The Clock Tower in the Piazza San Marco

Former Title:The Piazza San Marco, looking North

Artist: Giovanni Antonio Canal, called Canaletto (Italian (Venetian), 1697 - 1768)

Date: 1728/1730

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions:

Unframed: 20 1/2 x 27 3/8 inches (52.07 x 69.52 cm)

Framed: 27 1/4 x 34 x 2 1/4 inches (69.22 x 86.36 x 5.72 cm)

Credit Line: Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust

Object number: 55-36

On view

Current Location: G, 119

In Collection(s)

European Painting and Sculpture

Terms

DescriptionA piazza is surrounded with stone buildings on three sides; at right is a basilica (San Marco). Across the background are multi-storied buildings; the center building has a large clock face in its center and a bell with two bronze figures at its top. At the left is a building with columns (the loggia) and part of a tower (the campanile). In the square are three flag poles and numerous seated and standing figures. A blue sky with white clouds is visible over the buildings.

Exhibition History

The Century of Mozart, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, January 15-March 4, 1956, no. 10.

Canaletto, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, October 17-November 14, 1964; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, December 4, 1964-January 10, 1965; Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, January 29-February 28, 1965, no. 20.

The Origins of the Italian Veduta, Bell Gallery, Brown University, Providence, RI, March 3-26, 1978, no. 54.

City Views, The Nelson-Atkins, Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, May 31-July 10, 1983, no. 18.

Canaletto: Master of Venice, Auckland City Art Gallery, NZ, April 9-June 1, 1986; National Art Gallery, Wellington, NZ, June 19-July 31, 1986; Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch, NZ, August 14-September 25, 1986, unnumbered.

Canaletto, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, October 30, 1989 – January 21, 1990, no. 26.

Gallery LabelCanaletto, the son of a theatrical scene painter, was the greatest topographical painter of the 18th century. The precision and clarity of his paintings of the grand architectural vistas and canals of Venice appealed greatly to British tourists on the European Grand Tour. Venice was a mandatory stop on the Tour, and wealthy visitors bought Canaletto's paintings as souvenirs. Although he was known to have used a camera obscura as an aid in preparatory studies, he modified topographical accuracy for the sake of satisfying compositions. Here, Canaletto has compressed the actual view in depth, because in reality the façade of Saint Mark's is located further back, nearer to the Clock Tower.

Provenance

Major General John Edward Bernard Seely, Lord Mottistone (1868-1947), Brook House, Isle of Wight, England, by June 13, 1923-July 17, 1925 [1];

Purchased at his sale, Important Early English Portraits…Pictures by Old Masters…and Ancient and Modern Pictures and Drawings from Various Sources , Christie, Manson & Woods, London, July 17, 1925, lot 117, as by B. Canaletto, The Piazza of St. Mark’s, Venice, with the Torre dell Orologio , by Martin, 1925;

Colonel Michael Alexander Wilsone Swinfen Broun (1857-1948), Swinfen Hall, Lichfield, Staffordshire, England, by 1927-1948 [2];

Purchased at his posthumous sale, Ancient and Modern Pictures and Drawings , Christie, Manson & Woods, London, December 10, 1948, lot 82, as by B. Canaletto, A View of the Piazzetta of St. Mark’s, Venice, by Montague Bernard, London, 1948-February 18, 1954;

Purchased from Bernard through P. and D. Colnaghi, London, by Carlo Broglio, Paris and Lausanne, February 18, 1954 [3];

With Antiquitäten & Gemälde AG, by November 18, 1954;

Purchased from Antiquitäten & Gemälde AG by Rosenberg & Stiebel, New York, stock no. 2863, November 18, 1954-May 7, 1955 [4];

Purchased from Rosenberg & Stiebel by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1955.

NOTES:

[1] This painting was offered for sale by Seely at An Extremely Important Collection of Drawings in Water-Colour and Oil Paintings, Principally of the English and Dutch Schools, the Property of Major-General The Right Hon. J. E. B. Seely , Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, London, June 13, 1923, lot 23, as The Square of St. Mark’s, with the Torre dell’Orologio in the centre distance, the Campanile on the left and St. Mark’s on the right , but failed to sell.

[2] Staffordshire Record Office, Stafford, England, copy of a 1927 inventory of Swinfen Hall, p. 89, D858/7/2.

[3] According to a letter from W. G. Constable, Curator of Paintings, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, June 14, 1955 , and an email from Harriet Reed, Archive Assistant, Colnaghi Old Masters, to MacKenzie Mallon, Specialist, Provenance, March 13, 2015, Nelson-Atkins curatorial files.

[4] Frick Art Reference Library, New York, MS.065 Rosenberg & Stiebel Archive, Sales and Inventory Records, Purchases and Sales, 1952-1955 and Photographs – Card Files, copies in Nelson-Atkins curatorial file.

Published References

Catalogue of an extremely important collections of drawings in water-colour and oil paintings, principally of the English and Dutch Schools, the property of Major-General the Right Hon. J. E. B. Seely (London: Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge: June 13, 1923), 10.

Catalogue of important early English portraits, the property of Sir Edward Oswald Every, BT., the property of the Rt. Hon. The Earl of Lathom, Pictures by Old Masters, the property of the Right Hon. Lord Ailwyn and Ancient and Modern Pictures and Drawings from various sources (London: Christie, Mason & Woods, July 17, 1925), 17.

“The Sale Room: Drawings,” The Times, no. 44017 (July 18, 1925): 9.

Catalogue of Ancient and Modern Pictures and Drawings (London: Christie, Mason and Woods, December 10, 1948), 11.

Antonio Morassi, “Problems of Chronology and Perspective in the Work of Canaletto,” The Burlington Magazine 97, no. 632 (November 1955): 349-350, (repro.).

“New Acquisition,” Gallery News (The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts) 13-26, no. 2 (November 1955): unpaginated.

Francis John Bagott Watson, “A Note on Joseph Baudin’s Copies after Canaletto,” The Burlington Magazine 97, no. 632 (November 1955): 353n7.

Winifred Shields, “Venetian Piazza is Pictured in Gallery’s Newest Painting,” The Kansas City Star (November 18, 1955): 12, (repro.).

“The Century of Mozart,” Bulletin (The Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum) 1 (January 1956): 25, (repro.).

“Eighteenth-Century Acquisitions Recently Added to the Nelson Gallery Collection,” Bulletin (The Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum) 1, no. 1 (January 1956): 84, 85, (repro.).

Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 74, 75, (repro.).

William G. Constable, Canaletto, trans. Françoise Jeanty, exh. cat. (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1964), 59, (repro.).

Jean Sutherland Boggs, “Canaletto in Canada,” Connoisseur 157 (September-December 1964): 154.

Lionello Puppi, The Complete Paintings of Canaletto (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970), no. 140A, pp. 98, 103, (repro.).

Ralph T. Coe, “The Baroque and Rococo in France and Italy,” Apollo 96, no. 130 (December 1972): 539, (repro.) [repr. in Denys Sutton, ed., William Rockhill Nelson Gallery, Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City (London: Apollo Magazine, 1972), 71, (repro.)].

Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 42, 589.

Antonio Morassi, Guardi: Antonio e Francesco Guardi, vol. 1 (Venice: Alfieri, 1973), 238.

Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 140, (repro.).

William G. Constable and Joseph G. Links, Canaletto: Giovanni Antonio Canal, 1697-1768, rev. ed. (1962; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 1: 89, 120, 120n1, (repro.); 2: no. 43, pp. 204-205, 266.

Willaim G. Constable and Joseph G. Links, Canaletto: Giovanni Antonio Canal, 1697-1768, 2nd rev. ed. (1962; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 1: xxxii-xxxiii, 89, 120, 120n1, (repro.); 2: no. 43, pp. 205-205, 266.

Joseph G. Links, Canaletto and his patrons (New York: New York University Press, 1977), 42, (repro.).

The Origins of the Italian Veduta, exh. cat. (Providence, Rhode Island: Brown University, 1978), 19, 65-66, 99, (repro.).

Homan Potterton, Pageant and Panorama: The Elegant World of Canaletto (Oxford: Phaidon, 1978), 34, (repro.).

John D. Morse, Old Master Paintings in North America, exh. cat. (New York: Abbeville, 1979), 44, (repro.).

Joseph G. Links, Canaletto: Every Painting (New York: Rizzoli, 1981), no. 47, p. 22, (repro.).

Joseph G. Links, Canaletto (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982), 66, 98n, (repro.). Bottom of Formaaaa alskdfjalsfjd

Ross E. Taggart and Roger B. Ward, City Views, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum, 1983), 11, 25, (repro.).

André Corboz, Canaletto: una Venècia imaginària (Milan: Alfieri Electa, 1985), 1: 41-42, 86, 130, 162, 178; 2: 593, (repro.).

Canaletto: Master of Venice, exh. cat. (Auckland, New Zealand: Auckland City Art Gallery, 1986), 8, 9, (repro.).

Katharine Baetjer and Joseph G. Links, Canaletto, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989), 8, 29, 115, 127-29, (repro.).

Bernard Aikema and Boudewijn Bakker, Painters of Venice: the story of the Venetian ‘Veduta,’ exh. cat. (Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 1990), 225n2.

Nicholas H. J. Hall, ed., Colnaghi in America: A Survey to Commemorate the First Decade of Colnaghi New York (New York: Colnaghi, 1992), 192.

Michael Churchman and Scott Erbes, High Ideals and Aspirations: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1933-1993 (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 73.

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 39, 189, (repro.).

Joseph G. Links, Canaletto (London: Phaidon, 1994), 75, 78, (repro.).

Eliot W. Rowlands, The Collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: Italian Paintings 1300-1800, (Kansas City, MO: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 19, 356-367, 457.

Information about a particular artwork or image, including provenance information, is based upon historic information and may not be currently accurate or complete. Research on artwork and images is an ongoing process, and the information about a particular artwork or image may not reflect the most current information available to the Museum. If you notice a mistake or have additional information about a particular artwork or image, please e-mail provenance@nelson-atkins.org.