Canaletto was a Venetian painter, born Giovanni Antonio Canal in 1697, who died in Venice in 1768. He painted the city's canals, squares and festivals in clear light and exact perspective, and sold them to the English noblemen on the Grand Tour. In 1746 he followed those customers to London and stayed for most of a decade. His views of Venice still hang in British houses and museums.
If you have seen a sunlit painting of the Grand Canal with the dome of the Salute rising on the left, there is a fair chance it is his.
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Canaletto's career rested on one habit of his customers. Young Englishmen on the Grand Tour wanted to take a view of Venice home, and a consul named Joseph Smith made sure they bought it from Canaletto. For years the arrangement ran so well that nobody needed to ask who was holding the brush.
Then Europe went to war, the visitors stopped coming, and in 1746 Canaletto sailed for London, to the people who had already bought his work.
London did not take him on trust. George Vertue, who kept notes on every artist in the city, wrote down the arrival of "the famous painter of Views Cannaletti of Venice". At one point he wondered whether the man painting in Soho was really him. Canaletto, Vertue observed, had a "reservedness & shyness in being seen at work", and for a painter whose name was selling the pictures, that was a problem.
What You'll Discover
What he painted before Venice.
Who sold his views to English tourists.
How exact his Venice really is.
Why he left Venice for London.
Who the second Canaletto was.
Where his pictures hang today.