The Bucintoro at the pier on Ascension Day, c.1740 Giovanni Antonio Canal Canaletto (1697-1768)

We create our paintings with museum quality and covering the highest academic standards. Once we get your order, it will be entirely hand-painted with oil on canvas. All the materials we use are the highest level, being totally artist graded painting materials and linen canvas.

We will add 1.6" (4 cm) additional blank canvas all over the painting for stretching.

High quality and detailing in every inch are time consuming. The reproduction of Giovanni Antonio Canal Canaletto also needs time to dry in order to be completely ready for shipping, as this is crucial to not be damaged during transportation.
Based on the size, level of detail and complexity we need 8-9 weeks to complete the process.

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We not stretch and frame our oil paintings due to several reasons:
Painting reproduction is a high quality expensive product, which we cannot risk to damage by sending it being stretched.
Also, there are postal restrictions, regarding the size of the shipment.
Additionally, due to the dimensions of the stretched canvas, the shipment price may exceed the price of the product itself.

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Once the painting The Bucintoro at the pier on Ascension Day is ready and dry, it will be shipped to your delivery address. The canvas will be rolled-up in a secure postal tube.

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From a vantage just beyond the Piazzetta, the canvas opens like a theatre stage onto Venice at its most ceremonious. Rising calmly at left, the Campanile of San Marco anchors the scene, its attenuated shaft counterbalancing the lacework façade of the Palazzo Ducale. Moored before the palace lies the Bucintoro, trimmed in bullion and crimson, its prows bristling with allegorical gilded sculpture. Gondolas throng the greenish water, their oarsmen poised, while a tapestry of figures crowds the marble waterfront and the small bridge at right. The mood is festive yet measured, spectacle contained within classical order.

Colour is deployed with calculated restraint. The sky, a cool turquoise, dissolves into pearly vapour near the horizon - a limpid screen against which the warm, buttery masonry of the palace glows. Sunlight pricks the gilt surfaces of the state barge, scattering points of fire that echo in the lagoon. Against this lucid tonal range, the ornamental black hulls operate like calligraphic accents, stabilising the chromatic orchestration and underscoring the theatrical clarity of the day.

Canaletto's method, informed by a probable camera obscura, combines draughtsman's exactitude with painterly tactility. Architectural contours are plotted in delicate ink-like lines, over which thin transparent glazes settle to evoke matte stucco and polished Istrian stone. Water is woven from rapid, broken hatching, while the Bucintoro's gilded relief receives minute touches of impasto that catch the light. Although the brushwork remains unobtrusive, the surface vibrates gently, refusing the sterility that absolute precision might suggest.

The composition is governed by a quiet geometry. The vertical of the campanile is answered by the flagpoles and by the upright figures clustered along the quay; the Bucintoro draws a sweeping diagonal that guides the gaze towards the low arch at right before looping back along the crowded Riva. Receding gondolas articulate a shallow but convincing depth, and fluttering banners punctuate the skyline, ensuring that no zone remains inert.

Painted around 1740, when foreign patrons sought lucid souvenirs of the Republic, the work records the Festa della Sensa - the ritual marriage between Venice and the sea enacted by the Doge aboard the Bucintoro. Ceremony here masquerades as solidity: the Serenissima proclaims maritime dominion even as her real power wanes. Canaletto substitutes the dramatic chiaroscuro of his earlier vedute for crystalline daylight, seeking to preserve civic identity through optical lucidity rather than theatrical flourish.