The Square of Saint Mark's, Venice

This substantial view of Piazza San Marco from around 1742, now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, presents Napoleon's 'finest drawing room in Europe' in Canaletto's most complete and spacious version of the subject. The piazza, framed by Sansovino's Library on the south side, the Procuratie Vecchie and Nuove on the flanking sides, and the Basilica's rich Byzantine facade at the east end, was a space without architectural equivalent in Europe — an urban room of extraordinary coherence achieved over six centuries of building. By 1742, Canaletto had painted the piazza dozens of times from every angle, yet each version maintained the freshness of observation that distinguished his best work. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, founded through Andrew Mellon's gift to the nation in 1937 and later enriched by his son Paul Mellon's systematic collecting of British and Continental art, holds this as one of its finest eighteenth-century Italian paintings. The scale (114.6 × 153 cm) suggests a major commission, perhaps from a British aristocrat who wanted the definitive souvenir view of the piazza for a grand country house interior.

Canaletto employs precise one-point perspective to convey the piazza's vast proportions, with the Basilica's Byzantine domes and the Campanile providing vertical accents. The careful rendering of the Procuratie arcades demonstrates his architectural precision.