According to my 1911 edition of Encyclopædia Britannica, Canaletto was the first artist to make practical use of a camera lucida, and is known (probably not unrelated) for paintings that are “unrivalled for their magnificent perspective.”
He found a lucrative market selling vedute — highly detailed cityscapes — to tourists, and became a favorite among the British aristocracy who were passing through Venice as part of their grand tour and who wanted a memento of their travels to take back home to England.
As I stumbled upon View of Venice with St. Mark’s, hanging on a wall in a gallery at the Huntington Library one day recently, I was drawn in by the exotic mood in the scene, whisked away somewhere which will always exist only as a feeling. The past is a foreign country, and the past in a foreign country is even more foreign, but despite this — or perhaps because of this — there’s plenty material in the painting for me to indulge in a fantasy where I’m there, in Venice back then, and having some business being there.
Bibliography
- Encyclopædia Britannica. 11th. ed. 29 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1910-1911.