Canaletto

Italian painter

• Born: October 18, 1697
• Birthplace: Venice (now in Italy)
• Died: April 20, 1768
• Place of death: Venice (now in Italy)

Among the most popular of the Old Masters, Canaletto preserved in his canvases the world of eighteenth century Venice. His realistic portrayal of the commonplace and his brilliant clarity influenced numerous artists in Italy and England.

Early Life

The son of Bernardo Canal and Artemisia Barbieri Canal, Giovanni Antonio Canal was nicknamed Canaletto (kah-nah-LAYT-toh), or little Canal, to distinguish him from his father. After nearly a century of artistic decline, Venice during Canaletto’s youth was experiencing a renaissance. Luca Carlevaris, the city’s most successful topographical painter of the early 1700’s, was creating a local market for the kind of work Canaletto would produce. He may also have been Canaletto’s teacher. Whether he taught Canaletto directly or not, however, it is clear that Carlevaris was an important influence on the painter.

A theatrical scene painter came to Venice in 1712 and introduced the idea of moving the vanishing point from the center of a backdrop to the side or even offstage. Afterward, Canaletto, who helped his father and his brother Cristoforo design sets for theatrical and operatic productions, frequently employed this device. In 1716, another topographical artist, Marco Ricci, settled in Venice. Ricci would affect Canaletto’s early handling of light, shadow, and background. Ricci was among those who combined actual scenes with imaginary, romanticized landscapes to create the capriccio, a form Canaletto would adopt in the 1740’s.

In 1719, Canaletto accompanied his father and brother to Rome, where they prepared the scenes for two of Alessandro Scarlatti’s operas, both of which were performed during the 1720 Carnival. These were probably the last theatrical pieces Canaletto produced. While in Rome, he almost certainly saw the work of the Dutch painter Gaspar van Wittel, who had moved to Italy in 1699 and had helped popularize urban views. Canaletto may even have studied briefly under van Wittel, and at this time he may have executed the twenty-one Roman scenes that have been attributed to him.

Life’s Work

By 1722, Canaletto was back in Venice, though the first work that is indisputably his dates from three years later. In 1725 and 1726, he executed four paintings for Stefano Conti, three of them offering views of the Grand Canal. These canvases are large: 1 yard (1 meter) tall and more than 4 feet (1.2 meters) wide; Canaletto did his best work on a large scale. Although he is famous for his luminous shadows, light backgrounds, and clear blue skies, his early works, including those for Conti, are painted on a dark, reddish-brown ground like that used by Ricci. Dark clouds hang in the sky, and figures are small.

In other respects, however, these early paintings exhibit characteristics of Canaletto’s later work. He painted slowly, in part because he insisted on using only the best ingredients for his colors. For example, he is the only artist of the period known to have used the then newly discovered Prussian blue; after more than two and one-half centuries, his paintings have therefore retained their brightness. Also typical are the high viewpoint and the realism employed in these works: One sees the peeling stucco and worn bricks of a Venice past its prime.

For these four works, Canaletto received ninety sequins, a fairly high price for the time. Some two years later, in July, 1730, the future British consul Joseph Smith, Canaletto’s greatest patron, wrote in a letter, “[Canaletto is] so much follow’d and all are so ready to pay him his own price for his work (and which he vallues himself as much as anybody).” According to one account, Carlevaris died of apoplexy brought on by the great success of his rival Canaletto.

As the French scholar Charles de Brosses was to complain in the late 1730’s, the English on the Grand Tour were especially fond of Canaletto, and in the late 1720’s the painter began catering to this audience by painting festivals and ceremonies. In such pictures, he drew on his experiences in the theater to convey a sense of drama and action, and he demonstrated great skill with both figures and architectural detail. This ability is evident in six large paintings of the Piazza San Marco, the first of many commissions Canaletto received from Smith. In these pictures one also finds another of Canaletto’s traits: a willingness to sacrifice topographical accuracy for artistic needs.

The Stonemason’s Yard (c. 1728) is the masterpiece and culmination of Canaletto’s early phase, with its realistic portrait of Venetian squalor, its dramatic depiction of people working, and its mixture of sunlight and shade (chiaroscuro). Heightening the sense of everyday life are elements such as a half-naked baby squalling on the ground in front of its mother on the far left and a woman getting water from a well on the right.

By 1729, Canaletto was turning away from chiaroscuro in favor of luminosity, even in shadows. His painting of the reception of Count Bolagno is bathed in light. The background is white rather than reddish-brown; the colors are clear and bright, especially the gold and silver of the barges. The contrast of light and dark derives from the costumes of the figures, and the threatening clouds of the earlier works have vanished from a blue sky.

Between approximately 1727 and 1732, Canaletto prepared a series of fourteen paintings for Smith; these appeared in a book of engravings that includes twelve views of the Grand Canal with A Regatta on the Grand Canal (c. 1732) and The Bucentoro at the Molo on Ascension Day (c. 1732). Smaller than most of his earlier works, the twelve views of the Grand Canal seem wooden, lacking the sweep and drama of the other two paintings in the volume, which are painted on a larger scale and were probably added as an afterthought. The frontispiece to this volume contains the only definite portrait of Canaletto. His keen eyes (at the age of sixty-six he boasted of painting without glasses) gaze from an oval frame. Beneath long wavy hair, a high forehead, and a full nose, a faint smile suggests his contentment with being the city’s most popular painter.

Smith apparently had the Venetian tourists in mind when he issued the volume, intending to suggest the type of work they could secure from Canaletto. In this regard, the pictures succeeded. Indicative of the artist’s popularity are purchases by the fourth earl of Carlisle and the duke of Bedford. When the Swedish count Carl Gustaf Tessin wrote on July 16, 1736, about the leading Venetian painters, he placed Canaletto first and commented on the high prices he commanded. Demand for Canaletto’s work increased to such an extent that he began to portray character types rather than individuals, to rely on assistants such as his nephew, Bernardo Bellotto, for much of the painting, and to use dots and dashes to suggest light.

The War of the Austrian Succession, which erupted in 1740 and reached Italy the next year, sharply reduced the number of visitors from northern Europe to Venice; even an expanded second edition of engravings failed to revive business for Canaletto. He now turned to other forms and subjects, devoting himself to drawings and engravings. He may have paid a second visit to Rome about 1740, for shortly afterward he executed a number of pictures on Roman themes. These may, however, have been based on illustrations rather than observation. He definitely toured the Brenta Canal as far as Padua, an excursion that led to many of his best drawings, with fine lines that resemble engraving. The careful attention to detail and drama that recalls his paintings of the 1720’s characterizes these efforts, many of which he later translated into oils.

Never reluctant to alter a view for aesthetic ends, Canaletto began to execute capriccios; among these is The Ponti della Pescaria and Buildings on the Quay (1742-1744), one of thirteen “overdoors” Smith commissioned, in which the artist moved statues from the library to the bridge. Even more fanciful is a view of the Rialto with the bridge Andrea Palladio had designed for the site; that structure had never been built. Canaletto did not altogether abandon topographical scenes, though. Entrance to the Grand Canal: Looking East (1744) is in many ways the finest of his renditions of this view, bathed in the Venetian sunlight as only Canaletto could render it and rich in painstaking detail, showing none of the haste that mars some of the other works of this phase in his career.

Perhaps Canaletto lavished time on this piece because orders from patrons other than Smith were limited. When he was told about the possibility of commemorating the nearly completed Westminster Bridge in London, Canaletto resolved to visit England to secure the commission. Two of his most important customers, the dukes of Richmond and Bedford, were involved in the construction, and if the English could not come to Venice, Canaletto would go to the English.

In addition to painting Westminster Bridge, Canaletto secured a number of commissions from the British aristocracy. For his patron, the duke of Richmond, he executed two of his most famous views in 1747, Whitehall and the Privy Gardens and The Thames and the City of London from Richmond House. New admirers also appeared, among whom where Sir Hugh Smithson, first duke of Northumberland, Lord Brooke, and the earl of Warwick, for whom Canaletto painted five views of Warwick Castle. From the dean of Westminster came a request to commemorate the procession of the Knights of the Bath from Westminster Abbey to the House of Lords.

Still, Canaletto’s popularity had declined from its zenith. Antiquarian George Vertue even reported the rumor that the painter claiming to be Canaletto was an impostor. Actually, the English were witnessing the change in Canaletto’s style, particularly in his treatment of figures, which had begun a decade earlier.

Later commentators have also criticized Canaletto’s English works, but the best, such as his Old Walton Bridge (1754), rival his greatest paintings. They also provide a record of a mid-Georgian London that has largely vanished and create a panoramic cityscape freed from smoke and suffused with Italian sunlight. Even if more than half of The Thames and the City of London from Richmond House consists of sky, the figures are wooden and small, and the vessels on the river are Italian barges rather than English craft, the picture still ably re-creates the sense of eighteenth century England, the crowded spires of Sir Christopher Wren’s churches punctuating the horizon, with the great dome of St. Paul’s serving as the focal center. With his views of Whitehall and Charing Cross, Canaletto captured what Samuel Johnson called in another context “the full tide of human existence” that London exhibited, conveying the city’s mood as well as its topography.

In 1755, Canaletto returned to Italy, where his last years were difficult. Occasionally he received commissions, but at his death on April 20, 1768, he had twenty-eight unsold paintings. In 1760, John Crewe came upon the painter sketching in St. Mark’s Place, probably hoping to attract passersby. If that was his motive, he apparently succeeded in this instance, for in 1836 Lord Crewe sold a Canaletto painting of the piazza; most likely it was the one acquired in 1760.

The Venetian Academy, founded in 1750, finally admitted Canaletto in 1763. For his reception piece he presented the academy with Portico of a Palace (1765), a complex study in perspective, rather than a more typical cityscape, because such work still lacked prestige. Had Canaletto painted historical scenes or portraits, he would probably have gained admission to the academy much sooner. The last recorded work by Canaletto, executed in 1766, shows that he could still draw firmly and well. The scene is full of life, and architectural features and human figures receive equally detailed attention. Although he depicts an interior, a rare setting for him, he fills the church with the light that is his trademark.

Significance

French novelist Théophile Gautier called Venice the city of Canaletto, not because Canaletto was born, lived, worked, and died there but because he, more than any other artist, commemorated and celebrated it in his art. An excellent technician—even in his oils he developed the ability to record his impressions without revision—he lovingly rendered every brick and ornament. Although he frequently repeated scenes in his eight hundred paintings and four hundred drawings, each version exhibits subtle differences because he shifted a building’s proportions, added or removed figures, or changed the lighting. Always present is a sense of drama, for he saw Venice—and London—as the backdrop for human action.

Despite the decline in his popularity after 1740, Canaletto influenced a number of artists. Among the Italians are his nephew, Bellotto, Migliara Borasto, and Giambattista Cimaroli of Brescia. In England, where his impact was greater, Thomas Girtin, John Constable, and J. M. W. Turner learned from his work. In Ducal Palace and Bridge of Sighs, Canaletto Painting (1833), Turner pays tribute to the master in his first oil of Venice.

Although English art critic John Ruskin expressed the dominant Romantic dissatisfaction with Canaletto’s neoclassicism, Édouard Manet admired his drawings, and James McNeill Whistler liked his paintings. The late twentieth century shared this enthusiasm, recognizing that Canaletto did not only paint “things which fall immediately under his eye,” as Owen McSwiney claimed. Instead, he mixed sun and shade, palaces and laundry hanging out to dry, columns, bridges, and canals, and beggars and patricians, to create a personal view of his world. If the result is rarely profound, it is almost always pleasing in its ability to convey a mood as well as a sense of place.

Bibliography

Bomford, David, and Gabriele Finaldi. Venice Through Canaletto’s Eyes. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998. This book was produced to accompany an exhibition of Canaletto’s paintings of Venice that were displayed at London’s National Gallery. The catalog contains reproductions of the paintings and essays describing Canelleto’s painting techniques.

Constable, W. G. Canaletto: Giovanni Antonio Canal, 1697-1768. Rev. ed. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1976. The definitive study of Canaletto’s life and work, it provides a catalogue raisonné of Canaletto’s output and reproduces the majority of his paintings, drawings, and engravings. Includes Owen McSwiney’s letters to Lord March about the artist, a detailed account of Canaletto’s estate at his death, and a selective bibliography.

Levey, Michael. Canaletto Paintings in the Royal Collection. London: Phaidon Press, 1964. The British Royal Family owns the most extensive collection of Canaletto’s works. This catalog reproduces the holdings in black-and-white full-page illustrations and offers a short biography of the artist.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Painting in Eighteenth-Century Venice. London: Phaidon Press, 1959. Rev. ed. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1980. Provides a well-illustrated overview of eighteenth century Venetian art. Arrangement is by type of work: historical painting, landscapes, views, genre, and portraits. Good section on Canaletto.

Links, J. G. Canaletto. 2d ed. London: Phaidon Press, 1999. A comprehensive study of the artist with illustrations conveniently located in the text. Drawing on recent research, Links clarifies some puzzles about Canaletto, such as his relationship with Joseph Smith and his activities in England.

Moschini, Vittorio. Canaletto. Milan, Italy: Aldo Martello, 1954. A lavishly illustrated text that reproduces many important paintings in full color. The detailed chronology is especially useful. Contains a bibliography of works dealing with the artist from 1733 to 1753.

Pedrocco, Filippo. Canaletto and the Venetian Vedutisti. New York: Riverside, 1995. Describes Canaletto’s paintings of Venice.