Read the visual description
The image shows a busy waterway filled with various boats, some with figures on board. The boats are adorned with flags. In the background, there is a cityscape with a church tower and buildings. The brushstrokes are detailed, and the color palette consists mainly of brown and blue tones. The scene depicts a historic setting, with distant structures and a slightly overcast sky.
National Gallery of Art · Drawing
Ascension Day Festival at Venice
Canaletto
- Date
- 1765/1766
- Medium
- pen and brown ink with gray wash over traces of graphite, tip of the brush with black wash, heightened with a few touches of white gouache (laid on thick eighteenth-century paper)
- Dimensions
- overall: 38.7 × 55.5 cm (15 1/4 × 21 7/8 in.) mount: 46.3 × 63 cm (18 1/4 × 24 13/16 in.)
- Classification
- Drawing
- Accession number
- 1963.15.5
- Credit line
- Samuel H. Kress Collection
- Time span
- 1751 to 1775
- Department
- CG-E
Subjects and terms
- Baroque
- Venetian
- holidays/festivals/parties
- genre
- Ascension Day
Provenance
Lodovico Furlanetto, Venice; purchased 1787/1789 by Richard Colt Hoare [1758-1838], Stourhead, Wilshire; by descent to Henry Ainslie Hoare, Stourhead; (sale, Christie's, London, 2 June 1883, no. 31); bought by Knowles; (P&D Colnaghi, London); Henry Oppenheimer [1859-1932], London; (sold, Christie's, London, 10 July 1936, no. 44); (Bellesi, London); Richard Owen, Paris; Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York; gift 1963 to the NGA
Inscription
in later hand, upper left verso in graphite: Lot 211; lower center verso: 18; lower right verso: 5
Watermarks
to be identified
NGA object ID 47091. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.