Description - Canaletto in Venice by Martin Clayton
This is a journey back in time through the most beautiful city in the world, by the artist, whose works have fixed it forever in the popular imagination. The book features fourteen dazzling paintings on the Grand Canal and 70 drawings - the largest group of Canaletto's drawings ever brought together. It includes an annotated map of the city detailing Canaletto's viewpoints, and describes how the artist created his archetypal images of the city. It also features a major review coverage anticipated in leading broadsheets and arts press. It accompanies the exhibition at The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, from 11 November 2005 - 26 February 2006; and at The Queen's Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse, from 7 April - 10 September 2006. Posters and showcards are also available. Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal; 1697-1768) was one of the greatest view painters of the 18th century. His images of Venice, the city of his birth, found an immediate market amongst collectors, particularly the English nobility on the Grand Tour, and are regarded as amongst the most accomplished of all topographical paintings.
In 1762, George III acquired the world's finest group of Canaletto's works when he purchased the entire collection of Joseph Smith, the British Consul in Venice. These included an outstanding series of Venetian views. Among them are 14 luminous paintings of the Grand Canal, which form the centrepiece of this book. The paintings are not only fascinating snapshots of Venetian daily life - from quayside workshops to the bustling festivities of Ascension Day around St Mark's Square - but masterly studies of the effects on the human eye of water, light and atmosphere. The 70 drawings in the book range from rapid sketches to exquisitely finished studies of churches and squares; from elegiac studies of islands in the lagoon to a delightful series of capricci, in which the artist rearranged the familiar Venetian topography to create a city of the imagination. This book explores Venice as it was and Canaletto's interpretation of it, as he created what have become the archetypal images of the most beautiful city in the world.
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