Denver Art Museum curator Timothy Standring was looking at some artwork in storage when he had one of those "Oh My God!" moments. What he saw was a painting of St. Mark’s Square in Venice, attributed to the “Studio of Canaletto.” Standring had actually seen the painting before, in 2000, when it was bequeathed to the museum, but he hadn’t looked very closely. This time, though, he had a hunch that the piece was actually painted by Canaletto himself in the early 18th century. Turns out Standring was right, and the cleaned and restored painting is now on display at the museum. He and James Squires, the Denver Art Museum's associate conservator of paintings, talk to Ryan Warner.
[Giovanni Antonio Canal, called il Canaletto. Venice: The Molo from the Bacino di S. Marco, about 1724. Oil on canvas. Bequest of Charles Edwin M. Stanton.]
