Canaletto

Happy Birthday Canaletto!! Antonio Canal, born in Venice, in 1697, was better known as Canaletto and came from a family of scene painters. He was influenced by a trip to Rome where he met Panini, who painted scenes of Rome, and he returned to paint Venice similarly. Through his painting he wished to recreate the magical aspects of Venice, with its architecture, canals, and lagoon. Although painters like Giorgione and Titian had already explored the beauty of Venice, Canaletto’s work brought a distinctive look at the delicate beauty of Venice. He worked directly on the spot at first, graduating to making detailed drawings to work from or even the camera obscura. He traveled to England where he remained for ten years (with short visits back to Venice) painting scenes of London and other sites in England as well as capricci. Remember capricci are small scenes of recognizable monuments, architecture, etc. in idealized settings. His work was purchased primarily by wealthy tourists and sadly his sensitive touch began to evolve into a hard almost mechanical approach.

Camera Obscura-Early primitive camera made by creating a shoebox sized box, with a pinhole to admit light, with a piece of film on the other side. The problem with this camera is, it lets in so little light the exposure has to be quite long. If the hole is enlarged the image becomes quite blurred, therefore the lens was created much later, evolving into the cameras we know today.