Giovanni Antonio Canal, known as Canaletto, made his name painting Venice for its visitors. Born in the city in 1697, he died there in 1768, and his canvases show its canals, squares and festivals in clear light, with every building in its place.
His best customers were British noblemen on the Grand Tour, the long trip through France and Italy that rounded off their education. He later followed them to London and stayed for most of a decade.
The Entrance to the Grand Canal is the kind of picture those travelers carried home. On the left rises the domed church of the Salute, which stands where the Grand Canal, the main waterway of the city, opens into the lagoon, and boats crowd the water in front of it. Many such canvases still hang in British houses and museums.
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Most of those buyers never met the painter. In Venice they dealt with an English merchant, Joseph Smith, who took their orders and saw that they bought from Canaletto. They paid for his name without ever watching him paint, and for years nobody asked who was holding the brush.
Then the War of the Austrian Succession, which set the great powers of Europe against one another, kept the British away from Venice, and their orders stopped with them. In 1746 Canaletto sailed for London, to the people who had already bought his work.
London did not take him on trust. George Vertue, an engraver who kept notebooks on the artists working in the city, recorded the arrival of "the famous painter of Views Cannaletti of Venice", along with his "reservedness & shyness in being seen at work".
A painter nobody saw painting was easy to doubt. Vertue began to wonder whether the man working in Soho, the London district where the Venetian lodged, was the real Canaletto or someone using his name. Part of the answer lay in the painter's own family.
From stage scenery to views of Venice
His story starts in the theaters of Venice. Giovanni Antonio's father, Bernardo Canal, was a designer and painter of stage scenery, the painted streets and palaces that stood behind the singers in an opera. The son started out in the same trade.
What You'll Discover
What he painted before he painted Venice.
How a consul turned views into a catalogue.
How exact his Venice really is.
Why he left Venice for London.
Who the second Canaletto was.
Where his pictures hang today.