Giovanni Antonio Canal
'Il Canaletto'

Giovanni Antonio Canal, known as 'Il Canaletto', was born in Venice on the 28th of October 1697 and is best known for his views of that extraordinary Italian city, where he spent the best part of a lifetime creating souvenirs of places of interest for wealthy aristocrats who visited Venice on their 'Grand Tours'.

Having studied painting and perspective with his father, a theatrical scenery painter in the Baroque tradition, Canaletto visited Rome in 1719 and, by the time he returned a year later, the influence of Giovanni Paolo Pannini had awakened a passionate interest in topography in him. 

By 1723, Canaletto had adopted 'La Veduta' (the view) as his main source of income, combining a magnificent eye for detail with a traditional use of colour and luminosity.

The artist's main rival for tourist commissions, Luca Carlevaris, was also an influence in Canaletto's obsession with accuracy and, at the same time, he began to devote some of his energies to the creation of the ceremonial and festival paintings that would prove to be among his most important works.

Canaletto's early canvases, in dense and sombre hues, gave off a palpable sense of a humid city beneath cloudy skies. Later, the artist's style became more fluid and precise, reds and golds beneath summer skies bringing a new richness to his subjects.

For some of his patrons, Canaletto produced a series of views on canvases of matching dimensions and, in the early 1740s, it was probably the British Consul in Venice, a merchant named Joseph Smith, who suggested that Canaletto include scenes from further afield, including Rome, for which he probably used sketches from the visit he had made in his early twenties. Increasingly using pen and ink, washes and etching techniques, Canaletto now also began to use more scientific methods.

In 1746, after the Austrian War of Succession had drastically reduced the flow of foreign visitors to Venice, Canaletto took the advice of Jacopo Amigoni and travelled to Britain, where he spent the next eleven years painting views of London and important country houses for his erstwhile tourist clientele. 

The influence of Canaletto is evident in the works of his British contemporaries William Marlow and Samuel Scott, amongst others. By the time Canaletto returned to the city of his birth, at the age of fifty-eight, his work had become stilted and lifeless and rumours were circulating that he was not the famous artist at all but an impostor! Canaletto's later work was increasingly criticized as banal and repetitive but he was elected to the Venice Academy in 1763. 

Canaletto's treatment of air and space, his use of contrasting light and shade, exerted a great deal of influence upon nineteenth century artists. By the time Giovanni Antonio Canal, 'Il Canaletto' died, on the 19th of April 1768, at the age of seventy-one, Joseph Smith had sold most of his paintings to King George III of England, creating an unrivalled collection of Canaletto's works. 

The Venice of today is beset with problems that have caused a great deal of decay in some of the beautiful buildings depicted by Canaletto. Apart from the problem of rising sea levels, attributed to global warming, the city is also faced with subsidence of the soil upon which Venice was built. The failure of the authorities to act over the flooding problems has long angered the people of Venice. In 1994, a plan, approved by an international panel of 'experts', was devised to create giant flood defences. Environmentalists blocked the scheme, saying that shutting the lagoon during high tides would have disastrous consequences.

In February 2001, the BBC reported that scientists were turning to the work of Canaletto for what they believed to be highly accurate clues as to what the sustainable water level in Venice should be. In the 1740s, Canaletto had started using a camera obscura to project images of the views around him onto canvas and then retraced the lines with pen and ink - thus his Grand Canal paintings are enhanced photographic records of Venice in the 18th century. 

With an accurate record of the tide levels of three centuries ago, the Italian national research council hope to be able to predict and prevent future flooding. Dr. Dario Camuffo is quoted as saying: "You can do a projection with the information from the past because the past is the key to interpreting the future."

It is gratifying to see science and fine art united in this way - providing a salutary lesson to those who mistakenly believe that the past has little bearing on the present, except to provide amusement and adornment.

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