title: Seeing Venice: Bellotto's Grand Canal (Getty Trust Publications: J. Paul Getty Museum)
author:  Mark Doty 
description: <br><strong>Mark Doty</strong> 's most recent book of poems is <em>Source</em>. In 2001 he published the book-length essay <em>Still Life with Oysters and Lemon</em>. He teaches at the University of Houston, and divides his time between Houston and Provincetown, Massachusetts.<br>
zlib_text: ![](images/00001.jpg)
  
  * * *
  
  The Grand Canal
  
  
  This page copyright © 2004 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  
  
  
  # The Grand Canal
  
  
  ### Henry James
  
  
  This page copyright © 2004 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
  
      
  
  Etext by Ian Hillman
  
  
  THE ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALEXANDER ZEZZOS.
  
  
  
  
  
  Scribner's Magazine—Vol. XII—November 1892—No. 5
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  THE honour of representing the plan and the place at their best might
  
  
  perhaps appear, n the city of St. Mark, properly to belong to the
  
  
  splendid square which bears the patron's name, and which is the centre
  
  
  of Venetian life so far (this is pretty well all the way indeed), as
  
  
  Venetian life is a matter of strolling and chaffering, of gossiping and
  
  
  gaping, of circulating without a purpose, and of staring—-too often
  
  
  with a foolish one—-through the shop-windows of dealers whose
  
  
  hospitality makes their doorsteps dramatic, at the very vulgarest
  
  
  rubbish in all the modern market. If the Grand Canal, however, is not
  
  
  quite technically a “