Panaromic View of the Bacino di San Marco, Looking up the Giudecca Canal

When it was painted

In the 1780s Guardi was a Venetian painter of around seventy. As a young man he had worked in a family studio run with his older brother, Gian Antonio, painting whatever clients ordered. His sister Cecilia married the painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, so Tiepolo was Guardi's brother-in-law.

After Gian Antonio died in 1760, Francesco turned more and more to views of Venice, its water and its buildings. In those days, when people thought of Venetian views, they thought first of Canaletto. Canaletto set down buildings as crisply as if he had used a ruler. Guardi let the light and the water shimmer under quick, flickering strokes. In his lifetime he never enjoyed Canaletto's standing.

Still, late in life some recognition came. When Pope Pius VI visited Venice in 1782, Guardi recorded the visit in a series of paintings. In 1784, past seventy, he was elected to the Venetian Academy of painting.

He died in Venice on the first day of 1793. His son Giacomo went on painting Venetian views in his father's manner. Four years later, in 1797, the Republic of Venice, which had lasted more than a thousand years, fell to Napoleon.

Much later this long sheet belonged to the New York banker Robert Lehman, and it came to the Metropolitan Museum in 1975 with the rest of his collection. Look again at the wet brown strokes on the big sailing boats at the left. In the Republic's last years, the old painter was still catching a day on the water with a hand this fast.