Painted at the culmination of his early career, this bright, colorful view of the Rialto Bridge is datable to circa 1729/30 and demonstrates the lively yet lyrical approach to painting that had made Canaletto the leading vedutista of his day. It is taken from the Riva del Ferro, looking north up the Grand Canal towards the Fondaco dei Tedeschi; on the opposite side at the foot of the bridge is the Palazzo dei Dieci Savi, with just a part of the upper floor of the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi beyond. A recurring subject throughout his career, the bustling area around the Rialto was the main commercial hub of Venice, and emblematic of its internationally revered mercantile and governmental systems. This close vantage point allowed Canaletto to focus on the astounding architecture of the bridge, and while known in a few variations, this canvas appears to be the prime autograph version of this particular composition.

Among the most recognizable sights in Venice, the Rialto Bridge was a natural subject for Canaletto. It would have certainly had a strong appeal for his clientele, who, by the late 1720s, had become more and more international, and desirous of classic views of the city. As the only span across the Grand Canal, the Rialto was not only of vital commercial importance, but it was also a masterpiece of Renaissance engineering in a city filled with architectural treasures. It replaced a series of previous wooden iterations; one built in 1458 is depicted in glorious detail by Vittore Carpaccio and featured a drawbridge apparatus to allow for the passage of larger boats.¹ After numerous collapses and other issues with these earlier structures, a permanent stone bridge was commissioned from the appropriately named Antonio da Ponte, whose soaring single arch design was chosen over submissions by Andrea Palladio, Jacopo Sansovino and possibly even Michelangelo himself. Although his contemporaries were dubious of Da Ponte’s bridge, it has endured for over 400 years despite predictions to the contrary, much like the city of Venice itself.

While the Rialto Bridge plays part in many of Canaletto’s compositions, in this painting the bridge itself is the main protagonist. Perhaps the earliest examples of such “portrait” paintings of the Rialto are two canvases from 1724-5, one in a private French collection and the other whereabout unknown.² Those are taken from a similar vantage point, although slightly closer in and from a higher angle. As a result, they present a more vertiginous and less intimate image than does the present canvas. Soon after, Canaletto produced the stunning Rialto Bridge from the South in the collection of the Earl of Leicester at Holkham Hall. That painting is on the rare support of copper, and dates to 1727/29.³ Due in at least some measure to the unusual technique, it also evokes a different mood, with a more highly keyed tonality and a steeply angled arrangement of the architectural elements.

In this View of the Rialto Bridge, dating to only a year or two later than the Holkham copper, we see Canaletto more as himself: dispassionate and balanced in his composition, if sunnier in his palette and playful in his details. The viewpoint of the composition is firmly rooted on the Riva del Ferro at eye level which serves to bolster the internal narrative of the composition. Venetians are shown going about their business—gondoliers take fares, two men in a sandolo carry a tun of wine over to the Riva del Vin on the far shore, a dog growls at a man resting on a bench, while in the distance at the foot of the bridge a workman discreetly relieves himself. One of the livelier details in the painting is Canaletto’s depiction of an aproned “peruchier” (or wigmaker) standing on the Riva as he goes about the messy job of powdering a periwig. A row of tall wig stands is arranged in the window of his shop, and indeed this small detail adds a bit of historicity to Canaletto’s painting. In a document dated 1740, the aristocrat Francesco Foscari (1704-1790) submitted a list of his holdings to the office of the Dieci Savi, the tax bureau of the Venetian state, whose headquarters is shown in the present painting at the far side of the Rialto Bridge. In that document, he lists his properties, their uses and the rents accrued. In the area around the Rialto is described:

In contrà di [San] Bortolamio sopra la riva del Ferro/ botega da peruchier tenuta ad affitto da Antonio Pedrolli, paga all’anno duc. 66⁴

The shop depicted in the painting stands at about that spot, where the present day Pescaria di San Bortolomio and the Riva del Ferro abut; as Foscari’s assessment was only about a decade later, the fastidious wigmaker Canaletto paints may be a younger Antonio Pedrolli himself, even if in idealized form.

Close-up perspectives of the Rialto Bridge continued to provide a subject for Canaletto in subsequent years, and he turned to it during different moments in his career and in different media.

A free, brown ink sketch of the bridge taken from about the same angle, but with some details not visible in this painting (such as a wooden hut on the Riva and the campanile of SS. Apostoli in the distance) appears to be an early study of the general view, made “en plein air” (see fig. 1).⁵ It can be dated to 1727/29 and while it is often associated with the Holkham copper, it equally could have served as a template for the present painting.

A more fully realized brown ink drawing from a similar vantage point is in the Royal Collection, Windsor, but has been dated to the 1740s (fig. 2).⁶ The theme was revisited in oil as well. A few years after the present View of the Rialto Bridge was completed, Canaletto included another as one from the famous group of 24 vedute that he painted in 1733-36 for the 4^th Duke of Bedford, still at Woburn Abbey. While similar, that painting is taken from a stronger angle in relation to the bridge, and shows less of the building at right, but much more of the Riva del Vin on the far side of the Canal.

Dating to 1729/30, this View of the Rialto Bridge is from the final years of Canaletto’s early career. It is the prime, autograph version of a group of paintings of this composition listed by J.G. Links (see Literature) under his entry for a painting which had formerly been in the collection of the Earls of Craven, Combe Abbey.⁷ That painting is later than the present example, with small differences in detail (for example, there is a blue cloth hanging from the right side of the bridge). Other versions which appear to be period copies include those formerly in the Marcelli Shaw collection, and with D.A. Hoogendijk, Amsterdam, where the remnants of Giorgione and Titian’s frescoes on the side of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi are more clearly articulated than in the present canvas. Indeed, while this painting was not widely available for scholarly assessment as it was privately held since the 1980s, Links had already surmised that it was the best of the group, “[p]ossibly the original version from which the others, including the ex-Craven version, derive.” Its reappearance at public auction only makes it more evident that it is the best and autograph example of the composition, produced on the eve of Canaletto’s most active and successful period.

We are grateful to Charles Beddington who has inspected the present lot firsthand, has dated it to 1729/30, and considers it the only known autograph version of this composition.

1. Miracle of the Relic of the Cross at the Ponte di Rialto, circa 1496, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice. A “Bird’s Eye” view of the same wooden bridge may be seen in Jacopo de’ Barbari’s 1500 woodblock print of Venice.

2. See C. Beddington, “Some Little-Known Venetian Views by Canaletto of the 1720s,” in The Burlington Magazine 148, no. 1244 (Nov. 2006), pp. 776-777, reproduced p. 777, figs. 50, 51.

3. The Holkham painting has been recently cleaned. For a discussion of Canaletto’s paintings on copper and a new reproduction of the picture, see C. Beddington, “Canaletto: La Scoperta della Luce,” in Canaletto e Venezia, exhibition catalogue, Palazzo Ducale, Venice 2019, pp. 115-117, reproduced p. 127, cat. IV.02.

4. “In the quarter of [Saint] Bartholomew on the Riva del Ferro/ a Wigmaker’s Shop held in rent by Antonio Pedrolli [who] pays each year 66 ducats.” See F. Sartori, La Casa Grande dei Foscari in Volta de Canal, Documenti, Venice 2001, p. 147. The rent is not the most expensive of all of the properties listed, but significant, no doubt due to its prime location.

5. Robert Lehman Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. 1975.1.292); See Constable/Links, cat. no. 592, and K. Baetjer and J.G. Links, Canaletto, exhibition catalogue, New York 1989, pp. 288-89, cat. no. 90, reproduced.

6. Royal Collection, Windsor (RCIN 907466); See Constable/Links, cat. 591.

7. Sold London, Sotheby’s, 29 November 1961, bought by “Albert” and subsequently with Mathiessen Gallery, London.