Lot Essay
The artist exhibited 'The Brides of Venice' at the Royal Academy, London in 1839, a painting recording the annual custom where twelve ladies of the local nobility receive marriage portions from the State and are married in the Cathedral of Olivolo. The procession is led by the Bucentoro and containing the Doge and Senators is followed by the gondola of Brides and a flotilla of barges and gondolas along the Grand Canal, Venice. This painting is presumably a smaller version of the exhibited work which was painted twenty years later.