The Bacino di San Marco with the San Giorgio Maggiore

This large 1726 view of the Bacino di San Marco with San Giorgio Maggiore, in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen at Rotterdam, is among Canaletto's most ambitious early works — a vast canvas (187 × 200 cm) that established the foundational composition of the Bacino view he would refine across the rest of his career. The near-square format, unusual in Canaletto's work, gives the composition an exceptional balance between sky and water, with San Giorgio's island rising on the right horizon and the Piazzetta columns visible at left — the full ceremonial geography of Venice's maritime heart organized within a single monumental canvas. The 1726 date places this in the year he painted several of the earliest Royal Collection views for Smith, suggesting parallel campaigns of monumental documentation for different segments of the market. The Boijmans Van Beuningen, holding one of the Netherlands' richest collections of old masters alongside its celebrated design holdings, acquired this major Canaletto through channels reflecting Rotterdam's position as one of the great ports of northern Europe — a city with deep historical connections to Venice's maritime commercial tradition that would have made this view of Venice's harbor especially resonant.

San Giorgio's classical facade provides the compositional anchor across the broad basin. The early atmospheric handling gives the water surface a warm, luminous quality characteristic of Canaletto's pre-1730 work.