Christie's on Instagram: "Upon first encounter with Canaletto's magnificent landscape ‘Venice, the Bucintoro at the Molo on Ascension Day’, actor and writer Stephen Fry described himself as ‘gobsmacked’. Like Fry, Canaletto was a fellow denizen of the theatre (by trade a theatrical scenery painter), and here he turns a glorious spring day into a stage for dozens of characters and boats gathered to watch the procession of the Doge in his golden barge. Through Canaletto’s eyes, the canal shimmers