Canaletto (EN)

Canaletto's name is inextricably linked to the vedute of Venice that played a key role in the "myth" of La Serenissima – images that met with instant, resounding success, sparking the imagination of British tourists on the Grand Tour.

But Canaletto is so much more. He began making a name for himself as a painter at the same time as Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, tackling his first vedute of Venice and capricci with the impetuous brushstrokes and dramatic lighting of a stage designer, as he had been in his youth. From the very start, Canaletto showed himself to be an indefatigable experimenter, constantly in search of new subjects, compositions, techniques and effects. He was a humble artisan, working ceaselessly; a supreme draughtsman and magnificent chronicler of city festivals; an inventor of stunningly exquisite capricci; an impetuous painter of Roman ruins, capable of infusing strokes of genius into the genre carried out in Rome by Giovanni Paolo Pannini. And, last but not least, a witness to eighteenth-century English civilization.

250 years after Canaletto's death, this volume studies about seventy works – both paintings and drawings – loaned by public and private collections from all over the world. Selected for their beauty as well as their significance along the artist's journey, they represent an in-depth, modernised investigation into his philosophy and method, his techniques and rapport with the reality he depicted.

The works gathered here tell the life and creative skills of one of the greatest artists of eighteenth-century Europe, whose pictorial genius revolutionised the genre of the veduta, raising it to the same level as history and figure painting – indeed, elevating it to embody the scientific and artistic ideals of the Age of Enlightenment.

Rome, Palazzo Braschi, March - July 2018