Merchants at Work

612 Merchants at Work
ca. 1760
Antonio Canal, known as Canaletto

This is an unusual genre scene for Canaletto, the renowned painter of Venetian city scenes (veduta) with a broad blue sky as the background. It depicts the sunlit part of a Venetian marketplace with emphasis on the column bases, next to which the merchants displayed their goods.

A beggar is eating while two men in the background engage in casual conversation. The scene is painted in a sketchy manner, with a sharp sense of reality, achieved through the lively alternation of red and green on ochre background. The poetical quality of the commonplace events is expressed through the varying softness and sharpness of the shades. The figures frozen in motion look convincingly real, as does the glimmering daylight.