# The Grand Canal near the Ponte del Rialto [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [CANALETTO]() - Date: 1701-1750 - Technique: Pen and brown ink with red and black chalk on paper ## Commentary The Grand Canal near the Ponte del Rialto c. 1725 Pen and brown ink with red and black chalk on paper Ashmolean Museum, Oxford This drawing is a compositional sketch for the painting The Grand Canal near the Ponte di Rialto \(1725, private collection\). In this sketch the artist combined two views \(from two preparatory drawings, now lost\), creating an effect similar to that of a photograph produced by a wide-angle lens. The sketch contains a lovely illustration of a comment that 'the sun shines' in Canaletto's paintings: at the spot in the right foreground where the sunlit mist in the final painting is brightly reflected in the water, the artist wrote the word 'sole' \(sun\). ## Related artworks - [A Regatta on the Grand Canal]() - [Arrival of the French Ambassador in Venice \(detail\)]() - [Arrival of the French Ambassador in Venice \(detail\)]() - [Arrival of the French Ambassador in Venice]() - [Bacino di San Marco \(St Mark's Basin\)]() - [Campo San Rocco]() - [Campo Santa Maria Formosa]() - [Capriccio: a Palladian Design for the Rialto Bridge, with Buildings at Vicenza]() - [Capriccio of a Bridge Leading to a Fortress by the Venetian Lagoon]() - [Capriccio: River Landscape with a Column]() - [Capriccio: Ruins and Classic Buildings]() - [Capriccio: The Grand Canal, with an Imaginary Rialto Bridge and Other Buildings]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()