Luca Carlevarijs (1663 - 1730), The Piazzetta at Venice, n.d. Oil on canvas, 38 x 76-7/8 in. © 2013 Timken Museum of Art.

Carlevarijs was the first painter of Italian origin to specialize in views of Venice. The artist's many precise renditions of the city reveal his early training as a mathematician.

His painting of the Piazzetta places the viewer in a boat on the Grand Canal, looking north toward the Piazza of St. Mark. The direction of the shadows from the southwest indicates that the time is afternoon. On the left are the library of Sansovino, the lower portion of its Campanile, and the column of St. Theodoric. To the right stands the south side of St. Mark's, the Doge's Palace, and the column of St. Mark. The buildings, though not entirely accurate in certain architectural details, remain largely unchanged to this day.

Provenance: Arturo Grassi, New York, 1948
Sabatello, Rome
Bruschi, Florence
Paul Drey, New York
Acquired by the Putnam Foundation, 1979