More than just a chocolate-box artist
Canaletto and the Art of Venice
Canaletto is one of the most popular – and derided – of artists. Yes, he provides the defining views of a city everybody loves, with their glittering ceremonial barges, darting gondolas and iconic buildings rendered with nearphotographic precision.
But this sheer technical mastery can appear to become bland and monotonous: whether he’s painting Le Marche or Middlesex, the pearly light, egg-shell blue skies and level of meticulously rendered detail have a slightly numbing uniformity, making him, for some, the ultimate in chocolate box art.
But how many people in either camp have given much thought to the man behind the art, or the way it developed?
Even to admirers, Canaletto can appear an inscrutable figure.
This sumptuous array of 18th century Venetian art, which promises Canaletto’s “greatest works”, may not provide a hugely developed sense of Antonio Giovanni Canal as a human being, but it certainly offers a more complex and contradictory view of his art.
Everything here is from the vast collection of Joseph Smith, the British consul in Venice, which was eventually acquired by George III. The large selection of drawings that opens the exhibition reveals the diverse aspects of Canaletto’s artistic personality. On the one hand, we are shown meticulously measured perspective views of classic Venetian scenes; on the other, spontaneous, almost impressionistic depictions of the same scenes, in furious flurries of penstrokes, which contrast strongly with the tightly controlled Canaletto of popular perception.
He started out as a theatrical scene painter, and, while his paintings may appear topographically faithful to the last brick, Canaletto, like the crafty set designer he was, thought nothing of moving buildings and whole stretches of canals, and shifting perspectives to create a more pleasing view or incorporate all the elements required by a client.
The atmospheric Colleoni Monument in a Capriccio Setting, in which the famous equestrian statue by Andrea del Verrocchio is seen not in its actual crowded canalside setting, but in a romantically ruinous landscape, is an example of a genre Canaletto mastered in contrast to his popular urban views: the capriccio, in which the artist was encouraged to give free rein to his imagination in merging the real and the fantastical.
Two other exquisite examples, of families going about their daily tasks amid Roman ruins, are very freely painted in comparison with his carefully organised architectural scenes, the play of evening light captured in thickly-laden lateral brushstrokes.
In these paintings, the figures are organically integrated into the landscape, while in later Venetian views such as Courtyard of the Palazzo Ducale, the imposing geometry of the buildings comes first and the figures are very obviously dropped in – as in an architectural projection – giving a sense of factory-like production.
The most revealing paintings here are 12 views of the Grand Canal, created to provide prototypes for commissions from British clients. Technically immaculate, they’re intriguing as a sort of game in how many variations you can create from the same elements – palaces, gondolas, bridges, water – but they’re hardly emotionally involving.
More powerful are five relatively early views of St Mark’s Square, seen from dramatic low angles, with the sense of a storm brewing in the romantically charged evening light.
A series of later views of Rome, however, look majestic from a distance, but up close have a flat, colour-by-numbers quality.
While I would question whether this represents the “greatest” of Canaletto – there’s an arguably more substantial selection nearby at the National Gallery – you’re left with a richer and more diverse sense of the artist than in any previous exhibition I’ve seen.
If the overall impression is of genius stymied by commercial pressures, his last majestic view towards St Mark’s, with the church of the Salute looming in massive close-up, suggests he managed to remain interested in the essential views of La Serenissima right up to the end.