Seeing Venice – Bellotto′s Grand Canal

Mark Doty has been a recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Martha Allrand Prize for Non-Fiction.

An examination of Bernardo Bellotto's "View of the Grand Canal", a visual record of life in 18th-century Venice. The volume presents the painting in a series of details that allow the reader to examine it closely and the book jacket opens to become a small poster of the entire painting.Bernardo Bellotto's magnificent View of the Grand Canal provides a rich visual record of life in eighteenth-century Venice. This painting one of the most popular in the Getty Museum is so sweeping in its scope and so detailed that it requires repeated viewings to take in its portrait of daily life in Venice in the 1740s This small book presents Bellotto's great painting in a series of beautiful details that allow the reader to examine the painting closely and enjoy the colourful and busy goings-on of Venetian life captured so unforgettably by Bellotto The book jacket unfolds to become a small poster of the painting in its entirety. Accompanying these delightful images is a lyrical essay by noted American poet Mark Doty. Together, Bellotto's painting and Doty's prose make for an unforgettable encounter with the art and life of Venice.