Antonio Canal, called Canaletto

Antonio Canal – First experiences as a stage painter

Canaletto was born Giovanni Antonio Canal in Venice on 7 October 1697. He owed his father, the stage painter Bernardo Canal, not only his artistic talent and tuition of the basics of painting, but also his artist’s name, Canaletto, ‘little Canal’. At the side of his father and elder brother, Antonio Canal had his first experiences as a painter with the design of stage sets for operas by Giovanni Porto, Fortunato Chelleri and Antonio Vivaldi. In Rome, he assisted his father with work for the composer Alessandro Scarlatti and Teatro Catranica, and during his stay in the Eternal City came into contact with the art of the Roman veduta painter Giovanni Pannini who encouraged him to paint his own city views. He took lessons with the experienced veduta painter Luca Carlevarijs in Venice, whose skill he soon surpassed. Contemporaries praised that the work of the teacher and pupil were of equal rank, but the sun only really shone in Canaletto’s paintings. 

Realistic depictions of Venice

In his early creative period especially, Canaletto painted mainly from nature, whilst his contemporary colleagues preferred to work in the studio. Even when he later painted his veduta in the workshop, he benefited from his experience in outdoor painting and laid great value on lifelike representation, taking the seasonal features into account and showing Venice covered in water and ice. The previously held assumption that he used a camera obscura for his paintings, however, is considered refuted by recent research. Nevertheless, he cultivated the particularity of suggesting more distant objects and figures with rough blobs of colour – a blurring effect that occurs when using a camera obscura. Canaletto’s work still enjoys great popularity today and is praised by connoisseurs as the crown of his oeuvre. His large-format depictions of Venice’s canals, Doge’s Palace, and the fading splendour of the Serenissima burst with innovative atmospheric effects and bold colours, to some extent anticipating Impressionism. 

England as the most important market

Canaletto found an enthusiastic sponsor and patron in the English banker and later Venetian consul Joseph Smith, who acquired around 50 paintings, 150 drawings and 15 engravings, a selection of which he sold on to the English King George III. When the War of the Austrian Succession restricted the important sales channels to England, Canaletto settled in London for a few years, during which time he created several city views of London. In order to meet the expectations of his public, however, the artist had to succumb to constant repetition. He eventually showed such clear signs of wear, that the English art critic George Vertue even spread the rumour that he was an imposter. Canal returned to Venice where he became a member of the Venetian Academy and continued to paint until his death.

Antonio Canal died in his birth and hometown of Venice on 19 April 1768. His nephew Bernardo Bellotto also took the artist’s name of Canaletto.