Scuola di San Marco with Loggia Erected for Benediction of Pope Pius VI May 19, 1782, Campo San Zanipolo

Pope Pius VI's visit to Venice in May 1782 was a major diplomatic event that Guardi documented in a series of paintings recording different episodes of the papal progress through the city. Pius VI traveled to Venice as part of a diplomatic mission to the Emperor Joseph II in Vienna, stopping for celebrations that included a solemn blessing from a specially constructed loggia in the Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo. Guardi, as Venice's foremost painter of ceremonial events, documented these occasions as both topographic record and atmospheric poem. This Rhode Island School of Design Museum version shows the temporary architecture erected for the occasion alongside the permanent backdrop of the Scuola di San Marco's Renaissance facade and the equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni by Verrocchio (1480-88) — one of the finest bronze equestrians in European art, dominating the campo with its characteristic fierce energy. The Rhode Island School of Design Museum holds this as part of its strong collection of European Baroque and Rococo painting.

Guardi's veduta style is the antithesis of Canaletto's measured precision: quick, tremulous touches of color suggest architecture, water, and crowd without fully defining them. The light is atmospheric and vibrating. Figures in the piazza are mere dabs of paint — impressionistic notations of human presence rather than individualized forms.