Thyssen-Bornemisza Museo Nacional Search Ir al contenido principal

Navegación superior (EN)

About Us Support Become Friend Shop Tickets
Español
Visit Collection Exhibitions Activities Education Search
  • Visit
  • Collection
  • Exhibitions
  • Activities
  • Education

Thyssen - Navegación superior (EN)

About Us Support Become Friend Shop Tickets
Español
©
Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza, en depósito en el Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC)
Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal)

The Bucintoro

ca. 1745 - 1750
Oil on canvas.
57 x 93 cm
Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza, en depósito en el Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC)
Inv. no.
77
(
1962.1
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop

The festival of the Bucintoro was the subject of extensive commentaries by travellers and visitors who witnessed it. It was depicted over the course of the years by artists such as Leandro Bassano, Gabriel Bella, Francesco Guardi and Canaletto. The Bucintoro was the official galley of the Doge of Venice, which Canaletto here depicts moored between gondolas and other boats beside the Piazzetta. This large vessel, decorated in red and gold, was a symbol of the Serenissima and was used to entertain illustrious guests during the ceremony of the city’s symbolic marriage to the sea on Ascension Day. On that day the Doge, accompanied by the city’s authorities, sailed out on the Bucintoro to the Lido where the patriarch of San Pietro awaited him to bless a ring that the Doge then threw into the sea, symbolising the marriage of the city of Venice to the Adriatic. The sailors on this large vessel were workers at the Arsenale, commanded by three admirals. Once the ceremony was over, including the accompanying mass, a large banquet took place at the Doge’s palace. The last Bucintoro was destroyed by the Napoleonic troops in 1798 and broken up in 1824. The example depicted here was the last to be made in the Arsenale, and was designed by Stefano Conti and decorated by the sculptor Antonio Corradini. It had a lion, symbol of the city, on the prow, and a figure of Justice. The ceremony of Ascension Day, with its various different phases, is recorded in a number of prints and paintings, including the present one. It brought together the entire city, led by the Doge who, dressed in gold brocade with an ermine cape and his distinctive hat, set out to sea followed by a procession of boats bearing local officials, ambassadors and the papal nuncio.

Of the various stages of the ceremony, the moment selected here by Canaletto corresponds to the return of the ship to the quayside at San Marco. The red and gold Bucintoro offered the artist a pretext to depict a panoramic view of the city. Constructed along a pronounced diagonal line running from the right foreground into the left background, it starts on the right with the façade of the Doge’s palace, the bell-tower visible behind, and part of the Riva degli Schiavone. On the other side of the Bucintoro in the left corner we see the Biblioteca Marciana, the Zecca (Mint) and the grain stores. They are followed by more buildings that continue to the Grand Canal with the great bulk of the Salute with its large, decorative volutes.

The canvas has been related to another at Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire. There are various differences between the two such as the extent of the view, which in the Woburn version continues slightly beyond the prison on the far left, and the position and number of boats along the quayside. In addition, the Woburn canvas depicts the moment when the Bucintoro leaves the quayside. Constable considered the present canvas to be a possibly autograph version of a view whose prototype is in a private UK collection. The present work contains all the elements that made Canaletto such a celebrated view painter, including the warm, brilliant light and atmosphere, the large area of sky with its gentle clouds and the pleasing, bright colouring, all based on a rigorous draughtsmanship.

Within Canaletto’s this subject and composition were popular and in demand from the artist’s clients, to judge from the number of known versions which total almost a dozen, including original works and studio versions. Constable was the first to include the present canvas in a monograph on Canaletto and grouped it with three others in private collections due to its particular characteristics.

The Bucintoro was in various private collections in the UK. It was probably in the collection of Henry Reveley of Bryn, north Wales, then in that of Hugh John Reveley and a Mrs A. L. Snapper. Auctioned in 1961, it remained on the market with Agnew’s and entered the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection in 1962.

Mar Borobia

18th Century18th Century - Italian paintingPaintingOilcanvas
Listen
Download image Print page

Products and publications

"Masterworks from Budapest" exhibition catalogue (Spanish, Paperback)

"Masterworks from Budapest" exhibition catalogue (Spanish, Paperback)

34.00 € 15.50 €

Watch Swatch+Thyssen van der Ast Gracious Bouquet

Watch Swatch+Thyssen van der Ast Gracious Bouquet

80.01 €

Poster Richard Estes. Telephone Booths, 1967

Poster Richard Estes. Telephone Booths, 1967

12.50 €

Catalogue Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Old Painting (English)

Catalogue Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Old Painting (English)

80.00 € 25.00 €

Visit online shop

More from the collection

Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal)
Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal)
The South Façade of Warwick Castle
1748
Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal)
Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal)
Porta Portello, Padua
ca. 1760
Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal)
Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal)
The School of San Marco
ca. 1765
Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal)
Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal)
Capriccio with Colonnade in the Interior of a Palace
ca. 1765
  • Private and/or didactic use
  • Commercial use
Private and/or didactic use
The Bucintoro. Il Bucintoro, c. 1745-1750
The Bucintoro
Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal)

©

Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza, en depósito en el Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC)

Terms of Use

The exploitation rights of the images correspond to the Fundación Coleccion Thyssen-Bornemisza, F.S.P. The Fundación authorizes the downloading of high-resolution images from its website for private use, use for educational and research purposes, and other non-commercial uses.

Use for educational and research purposes is understood as the non-commercial or advertising use of images in presentations, conferences, school or university work, in classes at regulated education institutions, as well as in academic publications, with a circulation of less than 1,000 copies, provided that it is non-profit.

Non-commercial use is understood as the use of the images in a context where no profit, monetary or commercial, is generated, directly or indirectly.

Any use other than those indicated above will require the prior written authorization of the Fundación Any request for educational and research use or for non-commercial use (including academic publications), should be directed by email to the Museum Photo Library through the email address archivo.fotografico@museothyssen.org. This department manages the worldwide distribution of the images of the works of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza and the management of their reproduction rights for those uses.

The user agrees to use the image of the website solely and exclusively for the purposes described above and in accordance with the following terms of use:

Terms of use

  • If the image is used for reproduction, the work must be reproduced in its entirety. The image may not be manipulated, deformed, modified, or altered in any way. In particular, no superposition (of images or texts) on the reproduction is allowed.
  • The reproduction of a detail or part of the work may only be made with the prior written authorization of the Fundación. In this case, the credit line must include the following mention: “detail”.
  • Any total or partial reproduction of the images authorized by the Fundación must be accompanied by the following mention: Author's name. Title, Date © Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.
  • The user will send to the Museum Photo Library of the Fundación one (1) free copy of the edition, publication or reproduction to the following address: Archivo Fotográfico, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Paseo del Prado, 8 28014 Madrid, Spain.
Download image
Commercial use
The Bucintoro. Il Bucintoro, c. 1745-1750
The Bucintoro
Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal)

©

Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza, en depósito en el Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC)

Terms of Use

The Photographic Archive of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza offers sale and rental service of photographic material of all the works on its Permanent Collection.

To request images or permits for commercial use in academic or research publications, that is, catalogues of other institutions, monographs and other specialized publications, you should contact the Museum's Commercial Archive by email at the e-mail @email.

To request images or permits for other commercial or advertising uses (general publications, merchandising, exhibitions, audio-visual works, web pages, etc.), you should contact the Museum's Commercial Archive by email at the e-mail @email.

The Photo Library and the Museum's Commercial Archive manage the worldwide distribution of images of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza works, as well as their reproduction rights. The applicable rates are calculated based on the nature and proposed use of the images, as well as the availability of the requested image.

Requests for scans or new photographs will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Once approved, an additional fee will apply. Re-photographing a work will require a minimum of six weeks to complete.

However, photographed works are protected by copyright. Therefore, regardless of the terms of use of the photographs set out below by the Foundation, it will be necessary to obtain a license from the author or copyright holder known to the Fundacion in order to reproduce or exploit the work.

Download image
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museo Nacional

Navegación secundaria (EN)

  • #Thyssenmultimedia
  • Press
  • Corporate events
  • Tourism
  • Join our team
  • Newsletter
Instagram
Facebook
X
Youtube
TikTok
iVoox
LinkedIn

The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza would like to thanks for the collaboration of:

Fundación Mutua Madrileña Master Card Comunidad de Madrid
©2025 Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum

Menú al pie (EN)

  • Legal terms and use of images
  • Public tenders
  • Transparency site
  • Accessibility and quality
  • Sustainability & 2030 Agenda
  • Contact
Ministry of Culture España es cultura | Spain is culture. The website promoting Spanish culture Paisaje de la Luz | Paseo del Prado y Buen Retiro. Paisaje de las Artes y las Ciencias
Certificación de Conformidad con el Esquema Nacional de Seguridad. Categoría Media. RD 311/2022