Bridge of Sighs, Ducal Palace and Custom House, Venice: Canaletto painting

Bridge of Sighs, Ducal Palace and Custom House, Venice: Canaletto Painting, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1833, is Turner's most explicitly art-historical Venetian painting — a tribute to his great Venetian predecessor Canaletto that simultaneously asserts the vast difference between their approaches to the same city. Turner's painting shows Canaletto at his easel in Venice, apparently making the precise topographical records that are the antithesis of Turner's own dissolving atmospheric approach. The comparison is deliberately provocative: Turner's Venice, seen behind the depicted Canaletto, is already more luminous and atmospheric than anything the eighteenth-century painter would have produced. The painting was controversial at the time; some critics felt Turner was diminishing Canaletto, while others understood it as homage. Constable reportedly called Turner's Venice works 'airy visions painted with tinted steam,' a criticism that Turner took as a compliment. The painting belongs to the period of Turner's most productive Venetian engagement, between his 1833 and 1840 visits.

Turner renders Venice with luminous atmospheric brilliance that contrasts with Canaletto's precise topographical approach, using the comparison to demonstrate the evolution of Venetian painting toward light and atmosphere.