# Piazza San Marco: Looking South-West [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [CANALETTO]() - Date: 1701-1750 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 67,3 x 102 cm ## Commentary Even in his later works Canaletto did not tire of ceaselessly experimenting and innovating. Here he shows a 'fish-eye' view of the Piazza San Marco, which may well have been plotted with the help of a lens. The distortion is such that we are allowed to see an impossibly wide panorama that stretches from the end of the Procuratie Vecchie at the right to the Palazzo Ducale and San Marco at the left. It has been suggested that the artist was consciously displaying his ingenuity in such works \(there is another important example in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art\), in order to impress the Venetian Academy of Fine Art which he was seeking to join at the time. ## 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]()