The City from Near the Terrace of Somerset House

Canaletto, 1697–1768

ca. 1750

Oil on canvas

Yale Center for British Art

A wide view of a city skyline along a river, with numerous boats and people on the water and in a park-like area in the foreground. This magnificent view downstream toward the city of London, with its forest of church steeples, is the pendant to Canaletto’s view in the opposite direction (hanging to your right). The view is dominated by the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, by Sir Christopher Wren, who also designed many of the spires (all made necessary by the destruction caused by the Great Fire). The “Monument,” a tall column erected to commemorate the disaster of 1666, is just visible near the north end of Old London Bridge (right). Canaletto produced for Consul Smith a much larger pair of paintings of the same subject. Those pictures were sold with the rest of