Venice, the Bacino di San Marco from the Canale della Giudecca by Bernardo Bellotto

The 1730s can be considered a standout decade for Venetian view paintings, or vedute. Myriad young aristocrats — predominantly Englishmen — arrived in Venice from elsewhere in Europe, as part of a Grand Tour through Italy. They sampled opera, carnival and various other pleasures, and at the end of their stay, sought to take home with them a pictorial souvenir of La Serenissima.

Like his famous uncle, Canaletto, in whose studio he trained, Bernardo Bellotto is acknowledged as one of the finest view painters of all time. A remarkable picture produced when he was in his mid-to-late teens, Venice, the Bacino di San Marco from the Canale della Giudecca, is being offered at Christie’s on 30 June 2026, a highlight of the Old Masters Evening Sale during Classic Week in London.

It is a busy scene, set early in the day. The viewer adopts a vantage point presumably on a vessel in the Giudecca Canal, looking east towards the basin of San Marco. The panoramic composition is framed by the sunlit Dogana da Mar (customs house) on the left, and the shaded island of San Giorgio Maggiore on the right.

The Doge’s Palace is one of the many buildings visible between them in the distance. It is located on the Riva degli Schiavoni waterfront, the curve of which Bellotto has topographically exaggerated. One assumes that this was for artistic effect — to pack into the scene as many of Venice’s grand edifices as possible, these serving as a backdrop to the activity on the waters directly in front of us. There are more gondolas and boats than one can count.

Bellotto shows a meticulous attention to detail, witnessed everywhere from the clouds in the sky, and the ripples of water across the lagoon’s surface, to the blocks of stone from which the Dogana da Mar is constructed.

Bellotto was born in Venice in 1722. It’s believed that he painted Venice, the Bacino di San Marco from the Canale della Giudecca towards the end of 1738. The picture is based closely on a drawing of his which today forms part of the Hessian State Museum’s collection in Darmstadt.

It was his largest painting to date, and can very much be deemed a coming-of-age work. More than two metres wide and over a metre high, it announces an artist of startling confidence and ability at such a young age. One key difference between Bellotto and Canaletto as painters was the former’s fondness for working on a large scale, and this picture’s dimensions are close in size to the masterpieces of his maturity: vedute painted in Dresden, Vienna and Munich.

It’s worth adding that where Canaletto was a master of light, Bellotto might better be considered a master of tone. His paintings, the example coming to auction included, tend to have a cool tonality — here, a predominantly greyish-green one, accented by pale pinks on buildings such as the Doge’s Palace.

Venice, the Bacino di San Marco from the Canale della Giudecca has been on public display just once before — in a Bellotto exhibition at the Charles Beddington gallery in London in 2014. Cleaning ahead of that show revealed further features readily associated with the artist, including the application of the sky in diagonal strokes from upper right to lower left.

It revealed, too, the presence of scaffolding on the church of Sant’Antonin: specifically, on the onion-shaped pinnacle of its soon-to-be-completed campanile. (In the painting, this is the fourth tower to the right of the Doge’s Palace.)

According to the art historian and Old Masters dealer Charles Beddington, an expert in Venetian vedute, Bellotto probably produced the work coming to Christie’s immediately after he had completed Venice: the Grand Canal with San Simeone Piccolo (today in the Wallace Collection in London) and shortly before he painted Venice: Upper Reaches of the Grand Canal facing Santa Croce (now in the National Gallery in London).

Little is known about the work’s early provenance. Its first recorded owner was Sir Arthur Aston (1798-1859), a prominent British diplomat. Postings in Vienna, Rio de Janeiro and Paris were followed by a role as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary at his country’s embassy in Madrid.

Aston also put together an art collection which, according to the catalogue accompanying its sale after his death in 1859, included ‘the finest productions of the Dutch, Flemish, Spanish, French, Italian and other Schools’. Among the works it included was Francisco de Zurbarán’s Saint Francis in Meditation.

The work coming to auction was acquired by its current owner in 2014, at the aforementioned exhibition, Bernardo Bellotto and His Circle in Italy & a Masterpiece by Francesco Guardi.

Bellotto’s days as a purveyor of Venetian vedute, like those of his uncle, were curtailed not long after he completed Venice, the Bacino di San Marco from the Canale della Giudecca. In 1740, the War of the Austrian Succession broke out, an eight-year conflict following the death of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles VI, which involved several European powers.

It dramatically decreased the number of tourists travelling through the continent — which dramatically decreased, in turn, the size of Canaletto and Bellotto’s client pool. The former ended up relocating to London, while the latter settled in Dresden, taking up an invitation to become court painter to Augustus III, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony.

The young artist never returned to Venice, moving later in life to Vienna, Munich and finally Warsaw, where he died in 1780. (A large exhibition of Canaletto and Bellotto’s views of different European cities is currently being held at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, until 6 September 2026.)

Venice, the Bacino di San Marco from the Canale della Giudecca, then, is a work that declared the arrival of a prodigious talent. Though he had the privilege of training in the studio of a view painter par excellence, Bellotto showed from a young age that he was no mere follower.

With Venetian vedute such as this one, we witness him striking out boldly on his own — artistically making waves rather than treading water.

Bernardo Bellotto’s Venice, the Bacino di San Marco from the Canale della Giudecca will be on view at Christie’s in London, 26-30 June 2026

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