Canaletto, 1697-1768
By Valerie Kniazeva
Canaletto, The Bacino di San Marco on Ascension Day, 1733-34, oil on canvas
Often forgotten but nonetheless a great painter and one of the fathers of perspective, Giovanni Antonio Canal was a Venetian master born on October 17, 1697. Given the name Canaletto, meaning “little canal”, Canaletto was a part of upper-class Venetian society at the time and came from a family of artists. This initially landed him in the theater as he trained with his father and worked as a dramatic scene painter. However, as an associate and friend of the artist Antonio Maria Zanetti expressed, he seemed to have become bored with the theater and found a style which changed his life after a trip to Rome. Captivated by Roman ruins, Canaletto sought to capture the detail and depth of the ruined architectural scenes that he saw and started to explore the style of veduta, pioneering this ‘view painting’.
Upon returning to Venice, he saw the city through a new lens and was eager to test his strengths and play not only with detail and veduta, but with investigating perspective and accuracy in the world around him. Canaletto is most famously known for his Venetian cityscapes, which especially attracted the attention of tourists who would request his paintings as mementos. Yet this connects to the question of why he was forgotten and omitted from many art historical records. As his fame came largely from tourist art, the stuffy world of ‘official’ art history at the time was wary of seriously discussing his work and addressing issues of authenticity, leading to new findings and revisions still today. These views followed him to England, where he moved for around nine years during a time of war in Europe, believed to be ‘following the money’ as fewer tourists were visiting Venice at the time.
Of Canaletto’s seventy-one living years, he spent about sixty of them in Venice experiencing and using veduta to capture the quotidian life of the city. Working to recognize individuals and the different classes of society, he created a realistic view of Venice, which he furthered by displaying different times of the year and varied parts of the city, from the bustling canal to the quieter squares. Still, perspective is the touch he used and altered to help idealize the city and make it more attractive and memorable. Especially in his later works after having returned from England, he leaned more towards the Rococo style, playing with shimmering lights to sneak in perfected views and perspectives.
Canaletto was a pioneer of the veduta style and an influential artist, in his later years becoming a member of the Venetian Academy of Painting and Sculpture in the College of Painting. Despite a mixed legacy, his story and the story of eighteenth-century Venice should still told today as a reminder that there can be new passion and vision in everything around.
Bibliography
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‘Canaletto Paintings, Bio, Ideas.’ The Art Story. Accessed October 15, 2023. https://www.theartstory.org/artist/canaletto/.
Erkelens, Casper J. ‘Perspective on Canaletto’s Paintings of Piazza San Marco in Venice.’ Art and Perception 8, no. 1 (2020), 49-67. doi: 10.1163/22134913-20191131.
The National Gallery, London. ‘Canaletto.’ The National Gallery, London. Accessed October 15, 2023. https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/canaletto.
‘Who Was Canaletto?’ Royal Museums Greenwich. Accessed October 15, 2023. https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/who-was-canaletto.