Canaletto began his career as a theatrical scene painter, like his father, in the Baroque tradition. Influenced by Giovanni Panini, he is specialised in vedute (views) of Venice, his birth place. Strong contrast between light and shadow is typical of this artist. Furthermore, if some of those views are purely topographical, others include festivals or ceremonial subjects. He also published, thanks to John Smith, his agent, a series of etchings of Cappricci. His main purchasers were British aristocracy because his views reminded them of their Grand Tour. In his paintings geometrical perspective and colours are structuring. Canaletto spent ten years in England. John Smith sold Canaletto’s works to George III, creating the major part of the Royal Canaletto Collection. His greatest works influenced landscape painting in the nineteenth century.
Оглавление
Octave Uzanne. Canaletto
Alfred de Musset (1810–1857) Venice
Venice during the Eighteenth Century
Venetian Society
Il Carnavale
The Nobility
Theatrical Arts, Poetry and Painting
Canaletto: His Talent and Training
His Origins and Youth
His Beginnings and Rome
His Return to Venice
His Trips to London
Canaletto: Portraitist of the Serenissima
Canaletto as Painter and Engraver
The Subjects of his Paintings
His Talent as an Engraver
Canaletto’s Legacy
Bellotto, Nephew and Disciple
Colombini, Marieschi, Vinsentini, Guardi and Longhi
Bibliography
Отрывок из книги
1. Venice: the Piazzetta towards San Giorgio Maggiore, c. 1724.
Oil on canvas, 173 × 134.3 cm.
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That is what Venetians, whom the inhabitants of Florence describe as grossolani (uncouth), were like. As far as our traveller was concerned, he appreciated the Canary and Burgundy wines of Marshal Schulembourg and the feasts where ambassadors pampered him, especially one from Naples, “the most frank of fools one could ever see, a really honest man, unaffected and good company”. In effect, the members of the diplomatic corps were very glad that they were allowed to enjoy themselves with foreigners because their office prohibited any access to patricians.
Nevertheless, with these people, whose defects and bizarre manners suggest a cultural decline, a taste for the arts and curiosity about intellectual matters continued to live on. It seems indeed that, as a last privilege, nations that have achieved an elevated felicity conserve, even in moments of agony, a small ray of their brilliant imaginations, saving their vicious decrepitude at least from ridicule and shame.
