This is a rare surviving example of a seventeenth-century gondola iron from Venice. Gondolas are shallow-bottomed boats that navigate the shallow, calm Venetian canals. Their prows and sterns were not designed to withstand heavy seas, and so could be elaborate and decorative displays of the blacksmith's art. They were also kept highly polished. The English diarist John Evelyn (1620-1706) visited Venice in 1645 and described gondolas as 'very long and narrow, having necks and tailes of steele, somewhat spreading at the beake like a fishes taile, and kept so exceedingly polish'd as gives a wonderfull lustre'. This example recalls the prow iron of an ambassadorial gondola sketched by the Venetian artist Francesco Guardi (1712-1793) (the drawing is in the Museo Correr, Venice). Although a characteristically Venetian vessel, gondolas were not unknown on the Thames in the late seventeenth century. Two gondolas are depicted close to the King's barge in the engraving by Dirk Stoop of the procession of boats that accompanied Charles II and his new bride Catherine of Braganza, as they travelled from Hampton Court to the Palace of Whitehall in August 1662. Later that year, the Venetian diplomat Francesco Giavarrina presented Charles with a pair of gondolas, and he recorded how the king was impressed by the grace and lightness of the boats, and with the skill of the gondoliers.