Grand canal between the palazzo bembo and the palazzo vendramin

Grand canal between the palazzo bembo and the palazzo vendramin
Artist: Canaletto
Oil painting on canvas; Size: 47x80cm; Duke of Bedford Collection, Woburn Abbey.

Grand canal between the palazzo bembo and the palazzo vendramin is one of twenty-four views by Canaletto commissioned by the duke of Bedford, Lord John Russell. Between 1729 and 1731 the duke undertook the Grand Tour of the continent, and in the last year of his journey stayed in Venice, where he met Joseph Smith and may have been able to acquire some of the painter's works. He certainly bought others later on, since several of the canvases in his collection cannot have been painted before 1735. The pictures of the city's most celebrated views remained in his London home for about half a century, and when the building was demolished were moved to the "Canaletto Room" in Woburn Abbey, where they can still be seen today.
Works like this allow us to appreciate the attention paid by the artist to the representation not just of every crack of the buildings, but also to the quivering reflections in the water. This analytical capacity has led people to believe that the painter made use of a camera obscura and the scholar Decio Gioseffi has recently demonstrated that the drawings in the Quaderno Magnolia (Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice) were in fact realized with the aid of this instrument. Canaletto made sketches and surveys on the spot, and also made notes in his sketchbook for subsequent elaboration. The paintings were executed in the artist's studio, but when transferring the sketches done outdoors onto canvas Canaletto maintained the individual points of view, thereby creating a multiple perspective that increased the fascination of the scene and resulted in a more poetic representation of reality.