Giovanni Antonio Canal

Background

Canaletto was born in Venice on October 18, 1697.

Education

He was trained by his father, Bernardo Canal, as a designer of stage sets. Most of the theatrical productions of the period called for sets representing palace interiors or palace gardens. Such scenes usually involved an intricate recession of pillars, pediments, porticoes, balustrades, and garden statues, and thus to execute them required a knowledge of the complexities of architectural perspective. In 1719 Canaletto gave up designing stage sets and went to study in Rome.

Career

In 1720 in Venice he was inscribed as a member of the painters' guild. From then on he was busy painting views of his native city. His most important patron was the English consul, Joseph Smith, who bought large numbers of Canalettos for resale to his countrymen. Canaletto constructed his views of Venice with painstaking care. Usually he drew the scene on the spot and then made more detailed studies in his studio. These studies were then transferred to the canvas with the help of lines cut into the prepared surface as guidelines for columns, cornices, arches, and domes. We also know that Canaletto used the camera obscura, a darkened box or chamber in which the view is caught and reflected by lenses and mirrors onto a sheet of drawing paper so that the artist can render the perspective lines accurately simply by tracing the contours of the reflected image. Pleased by his success with the English, Canaletto went to England in 1746. He stayed there off and on for a decade, but the results were disappointing. In Venice he had provided the English with scenes they considered exotic and picturesque, whereas in England he could provide them only with views of what they already knew. Back in Venice, Canaletto continued to paint views for tourists. He also won acceptance from the Venetians themselves with a new form, the architectural caprice, in which famous landmarks were combined arbitrarily or (rarely in Canaletto's case) the architecture was invented altogether. With one of these as his reception piece he was finally admitted to the Venetian Academy in 1763. Five years later, on April 20, 1768, he died.

Achievements

• Canaletto is known for his scenes of 18th-century Venice, executed with accuracy, precision, and Iuminosity. Canaletto and Francesco Guardi between them created the image the world has held of Venice from the late 18th century to the present day.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Giovanni Antonio Canal, Known as Canaletto, 1697-1768 (Masters of Italian Art Series)

    (Dust jacket notes: "In the age of the Grand Tour and the ...)

  • Delphi Collected Works of Canaletto (Illustrated) (Delphi Masters of Art Book 31)

    (The Venetian old master Canaletto achieved international ...)

  • Canaletto's Etchings: Catalogue Raisonné

    (The second enlarged edition of the authoritative catalogu...)

  • GIOVANNI ANTONIO CANAL, GENNANT CANALETTO: 1697-1768.

Personality

One of the many Englishmen who visited Venice in the 18th century said that Canaletto's excellence lay in painting things that fell immediately under his eye. What falls under the eye in Venice, then as now, is romantic enough. The buildings, built along canals instead of streets, seem to rise up out of the lagoon as if suspended between earth and water.

Connections

Father:

Bernardo Canal

Patron :

Owen Swiny

References

• Canaletto: Giovanni Antonio Canal 1697-1768
• Canaletto: Giovanni Antonio Canal: 1697-1768: Volume One: Life and Work and Volume Two: The Catalogue Raisonne