Original subtitles

Welcome to Great Art.

For the past few years, we've been filming the biggest exhibitions

in the world about some of the greatest artists and art in history.

Not only did we record these landmark shows,

but we also secured privileged access behind the scenes

of the galleries and museums concerned.

We then used the exhibition as a springboard

to take a broader look at these artists.

In this film, we focus on the 2017 exhibition

at The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London.

The Queen's Gallery is where the Royal Collection can hold exhibitions

drawn from its treasure troves of more than a million artworks.

Among its jewels is a unique collection of 18th-century Venetian art,

including an unrivalled number of Canalettos.

Giovanni Antonio Canal is a remarkable artist

living at a remarkable time in a remarkable city.

Known as Canaletto, it's perhaps his paintings above all others

that have created our idea of Venice.

But he's often misunderstood or underappreciated.

Too often he's seen out of context,

and the artistic production of Venice at this time

was striking and influential, and few know the story

behind why so many of his works ended up in Britain.

This exhibition, and thus this film, seek to rectify that.

ROSIE RAZZALL: We're in the Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace,

and this is the display space

where the Royal Collection can be seen by the public.

The Royal Collection is spread across many royal residences.

Paintings can be seen on display at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle,

but also at Hampton Court, Kew Palace or Kensington Palace.

The Royal Collection is the art collection that's been accumulated

and collected by many successive generations of monarchs,

and it includes paintings, drawings, prints and decorative arts.

The Royal Collection is now held in trust by Her Majesty the Queen,

and it's here that the public can come to see parts of the Collection.

LUCY WHITAKER: The Royal Collection has the largest assemblage of works

by Canaletto in the world.

It has major paintings, drawings and etchings.

So one of the things we can show

is not only the range of works by Canaletto,

but also the way in which he moved in his creative process

from drawing to the final painting.

With this exhibition, all the works were originally assembled

by the collector Consul Joseph Smith,

an Englishman who was living in Venice,

and who sold his entire collection to George III in 1762.

Smith not only collected works by Canaletto,

but also by the other artists working at the same time in Venice.

These artists included Sebastiano Ricci,

Marco Ricci, Rosalba Carriera,

Luca Carlevarijs, Zuccarelli, Piazzetta, and others.

This gives us a unique opportunity

not only to show a large body of Canaletto's works

in the Queen's Gallery, but also to examine and put into context

some of Venice's most influential artists of the 18th century.

LORENZO PERICOLO: The first time when I visited the exhibition,

I was particularly struck by the variety

of Canaletto's er visual intelligence.

The quality of his draughtsmanship, it varies immensely,

and there is a sort of continuous balancing between optical accuracy,

geometrical er layout,

and then visual impression and transformation of the optical data.

And then the ways in which the paintings are composed,

they always show different aspects of Canaletto's invention,

to the point that you can feel, or you can follow,

Canaletto thinking not only about Venice,

but thinking about architecture,

thinking about the difficult sometimes history of Italy,

and how this architecture is an important part of what Venice,

the Veneto, Italy was for Canaletto and his contemporaries.

ROSIE RAZZALL: Canaletto has defined the image of Venice to the British

to such an extent that it's easy to forget

that he was actually working in a much broader cultural sphere.

So by reuniting Canaletto's paintings

with works by other Venetian artists,

we get a much fuller picture

of the cultural and social life of the city in that period,

and also some of the undercurrents

that were influencing Canaletto at this time.

So the interest in Palladian architecture, for example,

which was of great interest to Joseph Smith

and to other scholars and collectors in Venice and in Britain.

The capriccio, which was a genre of painting

that was particularly taken up by Venetian artists,

involving the combination of reality and elements from the imagination.

And so we see a much, much broader picture of the life of Venice

through this lens of the collection of Joseph Smith.

You had huge numbers of British grand tourists travelling to Venice

and enjoying the pleasures that it had to offer,

not only the annual carnival,

which took place in the period between St Stephen's Day

on 26th December and the beginning of Lent,

which was when people would wear masks and carnival costume.

You had lots of annual festivals that were celebrated in the city.

Venice was also a thriving centre for the opera.

Erm... There were 17 opera houses in the city by the end of the century.

(VIVALDI'S 'TU M'OFFEDNI' PLAYING)

# Tu m'offendi

# Tu m'offendi, ma non rendi

# Meno forte, e meno amante

# Il costante

(VOCALISING CONTINUES)

# Mio fraterno dolce amor #

There were two particular places in Venice which were really important.

One was the area around San Marco,

which was the political and religious life of Venice.

And the other was the Rialto,

which is geographically the narrowest point of the Grand Canal,

and where it was obvious to build a bridge.

And around this bridge grew up the major trading offices

of erm the Venetians, but also of foreigners working in Venice -

for example, the Turks and the Germans, and er so on.

Its power was in trade,

and importing and exporting goods from the East to the West.

ROSEMARY SWEET: Venice had an extraordinary reputation

from the medieval period onwards.

For a start, it's an extraordinary city,

the fact that it is in the sea - it's an island in the sea.

But it was one of the wealthiest

and most popular cities of the medieval period

and had this extraordinary trade with the East.

So this was the emporium where all the luxuries

and exotic goods from the East came through.

So the erm velvets, the spices,

the silks which were imported into Britain, these come from Venice.

So from the medieval period,

Venice has been associated in people's imaginations

with ideas of luxury, with ideas of the exotic.

And it's been extremely powerful, that it...

Because it was so wealthy, it was a real player

in European power politics,

and formed alliances with other European states.

This is the era when Italy was composed of city states

and small principalities.

And so, because of its wealth, it was a mover and shaker

and played a very important part in the Crusades, for example.

And Venice seemed to offer an example of what was regarded by Aristotle

as the best form of government - mixed government.

That is it combines monarchy in the person of a doge,

with the aristocracy in the Senate and the people in the Grand Council,

and that this system of checks and balances

ensured that no...power didn't become despotic,

and that there wasn't any danger of popular uprising,

and that therefore these checks and balances provided the stability.

This is an erm commercial republic

that Britain feels it can identify with.

It has the kind of balance of power

that many people in Britain were aspiring to.

It was resisting the papacy, and so they see a lot of similarities.

So particularly in the late-17th century,

there was a lot of political interest in Venice

as offering a model of government.

Canaletto was baptised Antonio da Canal

in the parish of San Lio in Venice in 1697.

His father was Bernardo Canal, a stage painter.

Canaletto must have begun his work training in his father's studio,

where he would have learned the skills of perspective -

these skills very important in theatrical stage designs.

His name appears in the libretti

for some operas in Venice by Vivaldi and Orlandini.

CHARLES BEDDINGTON: The Canal family

were I think what we would call upper-middle-class.

Unlike some of Canaletto's rivals, for instance, who came from the...

often from the sort of the lowest echelons of Venetian society.

Canaletto did fancy himself as slightly grand.

And there is a da Canal coat of arms, which, in fact,

he uses as a signature in the later stages of his career.

He's obviously rather sort of proud

of coming from a family that has a coat of arms.

I imagine him as being rather gentlemanly,

solitary, and quite possibly a bit difficult.

Canaletto ended up supporting all three of his sisters,

and was clearly kind to them and good at being supportive.

And we think that he was born in a small courtyard

in the middle of Venice, which one can still go and see,

in an upstairs apartment.

We know that he lived there because he did drawings from it,

two of which survive, are are particularly fresh

and sort of immediate drawings done out of his windows.

But we know, really, very little about his early life at all.

We don't know whether he had any training from anybody

apart from his father.

The one thing that we are told is about the key change in 1719-20,

when he goes to Rome with his father

to help him with the design of theatre sets,

when apparently he was so inspired by his surroundings

that he decided to draw and paint them.

He clearly had a significant natural talent.

ROSIE RAZZALL: What we're looking at here are two proprietary studies

that Canaletto made for Joseph Smith erm sometime in the early 1720s,

and erm they're proprietary studies

for the first commission that Canaletto made for Smith.

And this was for a set of six monumental paintings

that are also in the Royal Collection.

We're lucky to be able to show the proprietary studies,

as well as the paintings that they were intended for.

And Canaletto would have submitted these drawings to his patron

to make sure that he approved of his designs before he carried them out.

They were intended as pairs.

So you can see in the paintings and in the studies

that the weight of the architecture

is on one side of the sheet or the other.

The drawings are quite loose and free in their execution,

especially compared to some of the other drawings that we have

by Canaletto, which are very highly finished.

And this is because they weren't intended

to show the minute details of the architecture.

They were just to show to Smith erm

as an example of how his finished paintings might look,

and just to convey the drama that he intended to put across

in the paintings.

What's really interesting about Canaletto's paintings

is that it's really clear to see that he was working on the canvas,

changing his mind as he worked and painting bits out.

And it's been great that we've been able to find out

that he was going through the same working process in his drawings.

In particular, we've taken an infrared image

of this drawing on the right,

which shows the two columns at the entrance to the Piazza San Marco.

One is crowned with the Lion of Saint Mark,

and the other, which we don't see in the pen-and-ink drawing,

has a statue of Saint Theodosius.

But the infrared image has shown that actually, in his underdrawing,

Canaletto originally drew in the column

with the statue of Saint Theodosius in the right place,

but then worked over the top with pen and ink,

probably decided that the column was too much, perhaps,

and decided not to draw it in.

But then, when we go back to the painting, he's changed his mind again

and he's returned the column to its correct place in the painting

and painted out the column on the left,

probably to make the two work better as a pair.

These paintings were commissioned for a particular room

in Smith's palazzo on the Grand Canal,

and they would have been intended to hang in pairs

in a very dramatic arrangement.

And Canaletto has chosen the Piazza San Marco,

the area around San Marco,

which is the civic and religious heart of Venice -

so highly recognisable sites.

CHARLES BEDDINGTON: I think what makes Canaletto a great artist

is his uniquely sensitive observation of things,

which might be weather or light effects,

people going about their daily business, how dogs behave.

I've always been a particular fan of Canaletto's depiction of dogs.

I'm sure he was a great lover of dogs.

Erm... Each one is different, and each one has a different character.

I mean, it probably derives ultimately from Dutch painting,

but it's entirely new in Venetian painting in the 1720s.

ROSIE RAZZALL: What we're looking at here

is one of Canaletto's only-surviving sketchbooks.

It's in the Accademia in Venice, and it's a fascinating document,

because it shows us Canaletto's first response

to the city that he saw around him.

He would have carried it with him around Venice,

making notes into it of the facades of the buildings,

mainly sequences on the Grand Canal in this sketchbook.

And it dates to around the 1720s,

so around about the time that he was first starting to make view paintings

and to sell them to patrons.

This page, for example, shows...

Here is the Ca' Rezzonico on the left,

which was then known as the Ca' Bon.

Erm... And it's a sequence moving across to the Ca' Foscari.

But you get a sense of how Canaletto was using the pages of the...

of the sketchbook to record the view.

So he continues this sequence here, the edge of the Ca' Foscari here,

and then he's moved down the canal, further down,

and so the Ca' Foscari is now much larger.

So he redraws again the facade of that building

and continues the sequence.

The Palazzo Balbi, which was the last building on the previous page,

continues here, and so the sequence continues through the book.

And he's also annotated it with...with his notes.

So we've got buildings labelled, like the Ca' Bon and the Ca' Foscari,

but we've also got little notes that are going to help him later

when he's making his paintings.

So 'B' is for 'bianco', or 'white'.

'R' here is for 'rosso', or 'red'.

And then here, 'sporco' is 'dirty',

so he's saying that the facade of the building is a bit...a bit dirty.

Erm... And you've got erm splashes of paint.

It's a working document that he was using

to record his first insights into the city.

This opening is very unusual, because it shows boats and figures.

And we've got on the left-hand side

some of the details of the boats that Canaletto was recording

in front of the Ca' Foscari,

and they're drawn in a very similar way to the architecture,

so the pen-and-ink, very simple outlines.

But then, when we move to his figure studies,

they're drawn with a much greater flourish - much, much looser.

The interesting thing about the way that he's during these characters

is that he takes a very similar approach in his paintings,

where they're painted with little flicks of the brush.

Here it's little...little squiggles of black chalk,

and it gives them a real vibrancy and emotional energy,

which is really going to give the narrative focus to his paintings.

CLAIRE CHORLEY: The joy of this painting, for me,

is the strong contrasts.

Er... It's the darks are very dark and the lights are very bright.

And the contrasts between the way the architecture's painted,

very formally, and the crowd scene,

you get a lot of highly impasted little blobs.

So over here, the chicken coops,

the...the hens poking their heads out of the coops

are completely convincing

with just a few little touches of impasted paint.

And then the group of the figures watching the Punch and Judy show.

Here's Mr Punch just appearing out...out of the curtain.

Canaletto's very good at just putting a few little blobs on

to make the sunlight catch the face of the audience.

And what I love about this one

is that instead of just painting the folds of the fabric

of the back of the puppet booth,

you have really the sense of somebody's body -

some...someone or somebody's in there,

pushing out the back of the curtain.

And what's charming about this painting

is that there's a little fingerprint here by the artist.

He's just modulated the...the light paint.

The fingerprint is definitely the artist.

It's... It's into the wet paint.

Being the most efficient way of making the right stone texture,

just in that little bit.

You don't get fingerprints happening very often in his work,

so it's...more charming and more precious that it's there.

LUCY WHITAKER: One of the very early accounts of Canaletto's life,

by Zanetti, says that Canaletto used camera obscura.

In fact, he was able to teach how to use it well.

So, from that basis,

people have therefore thought that he must have used a camera obscura.

Today, we are much more sceptical erm

because of the evidence that we actually show in the exhibition,

erm that all his drawings were very carefully prepared in the studio.

CHARLES BEDDINGTON: The camera obscura is a box

with a pinhole in it and a mirror,

which projects an image of, you know, for instance,

a building in front of the artist onto a sheet of paper,

which can then be traced.

So it's very useful for the establishment of erm

of the basics of a composition.

But erm it's no good for detail,

and obviously it cannot be used except in a static position,

which, in Venice, obviously rules out its use on any form of water.

GIORGIO TAGLIAFERRO: The 16th century is considered the golden age

of Venetian art, and especially Venetian painting,

the most famous painter being Titian.

Other big names, of course, are Tintoretto, Veronese.

They are leading figures, but they're just not the only ones, of course.

There was a huge production of art in general,

and painting more specifically, over the 16th century,

which will be very influential later,

especially for painters er working in the 18th century.

Venetian painters were regarded as the masters of colour,

and they were very influential even later.

Er... 17th-century, 18th-century painters

looked to Titian and Veronese especially

as examples of beautiful painting,

and especially the way they handle colours.

And I think that there are several factors.

Again, trade, perhaps.

The availability of pigments you had in Venice was unique,

and even Raphael ordered pigments from Venice.

In the 16th century, there is a fascination

for the er sensuality of Titian's colour, especially.

It's thick, textural, and extremely charming.

What I believe people are struck by when they look at a Venetian painting

is precisely this unfathomable effect that colour has on your sight.

CHARLES BEDDINGTON: The exhibition provides a remarkable opportunity

to see all these fabulous paintings done for Consul Smith.

Smith is a major figure in Venetian painting of the 18th century

because he was one of the great patrons of contemporary artists.

He had, well, a major collection of old art,

but also bought works

from most of the more interesting Venetian painters of the day,

which he used, initially, to decorate his house,

and he had exceptional examples.

LUCY WHITAKER: Consul Smith had his house

just a few hundred yards from the Rialto Bridge,

and built up his wealth through the import and export trade -

particularly fish and wine.

And, of course, Canaletto didn't live that far away from the Rialto Bridge.

He lived in the San Lio area,

so both patron and artist were in the same neighbourhood.

ROSEMARY SWEET: Consul Smith, I think, is extremely interesting

for the way in which he combines commercial interests

with being a connoisseur and a dealer in art.

And he's very strategic about this.

Going to Consul Smith had that added advantage,

that this was a house that you could freely enter,

and he would make sure that people were exposed

to the kinds of paintings that he wanted to sell,

and then he was able to act as the agent, and make a profit in doing so.

ROSIE RAZZALL: There's a lot of evidence that Joseph Smith

had much broader interest than just the commercial side of...

of his dealings with Canaletto.

He was interested in books. He built up a great library

and was involved in the setting up of the Pasquali press,

which printed important enlightenment texts.

Printmaking in Venice

is a very important adjunct to the marketing of view paintings.

By producing a large series of engravings of Venetian views,

these engravings disseminated the compositions of the view painters

to the far ends of Europe.

ROSIE RAZZALL: We're standing in the print shop of Gianni Basso,

which is in the Cannaregio district of Venice.

He uses a lot of traditional printmaking techniques

that would have been used in the 18th century.

Venice in the 18th century was a real thriving centre for printmaking

and book production.

Erm... Artists like Canaletto and Marco Ricci and Tiepolo

took up etching themselves,

but it was also in places like this where grand tourists

and visitors to Venice

could buy especially reproductions of Canaletto's paintings.

Perhaps they couldn't afford to buy an oil painting,

but they could afford to buy a print.

In 1735, Antonio Visentini made a set of reproductions

after Canaletto's most important paintings in Consul Smith's house

on the Grand Canal.

So visitors could consult this prospectus of prints

and decide which versions they might commission for their own collection,

or they might simply decide to acquire the prints

to take back to Britain.

And Joseph Smith was very interested in printmaking

and print culture in Venice,

and in the 1730s he set up his own printing press, the Pasquali press.

Erm... He employed Antonio Visentini as one of its principal draughtsmen,

and lots of the prints that were made by artists

were then published as sets through Pasquali.

CHARLES BEDDINGTON: From the early 1730s onwards,

he could produce this sort of set of engravings

and say, you know, 'Please just tell me which numbers you'd like

and, you know, I'll get them to send them to you.'

The business was extremely well organised,

because Smith's brother lived in London.

Paintings would be shipped to London

and delivered to the client by Smith's brother,

and he would collect the payment.

ROSIE RAZZALL: Both Joseph Smith and Canaletto were clearly very shrewd,

and they knew their market,

and they knew that there was a market there

for these views of Venice.

And actually it's interesting, because Venetian families themselves

were not really interested in buying his paintings.

It was mainly erm a tourist market that Canaletto was catering towards.

These Venetian families were instead commissioning history paintings

or decorative schemes by artists like Sebastiano Ricci or Tiepolo

to decorate their houses, because, for them,

they didn't need to have a painting of Venice

because they could look out of the window,

whereas British grand tourists taking these souvenirs home

wanted to hang them in their country houses,

where they could be reminded of this great...

this great period in their lives.

MATTHEW HIRST: Woburn Abbey is the family home of the Dukes of Bedford,

and it has been in their possession since 1547,

when it was gifted in the will of Henry VIII to Sir John Russell,

who later became the first Earl of Bedford.

The fourth Duke of Bedford,

who purchased the 24 views by Canaletto of Venice

that are in the collection here at Woburn

acquired them on his grand tour in 1731.

We know that he was in Venice.

And at that time he was Lord John Russell.

He hadn't inherited the title from his brother.

He became the duke in 1733,

and we know that he went back to Venice again in 1736.

The fourth Duke of Bedford would have been a very young man

when he arrived in Venice. He was 21 years old,

so he would have started his grand tour probably when he was 19.

And he would have been conscious that, as part of that tour,

he was acquiring works of art

which would have effectively given a sense of his own taste,

so that when he got home he could use them to decorate his home

and be able to show his er companions and his contemporaries

that he'd been on a grand tour -

he'd seen these things first-hand, for himself,

and that he was clearly, as a consequence, an educated man.

ROSEMARY SWEET: The grand tour is a journey

that was generally undertaken by young men during the 18th century.

And that's the way in which historians usually use it.

It's this idea of young men who have left school,

might have left university.

They'll be in their mid-to-late teens,

and they're sent off by their parents

on an extended tour of Europe.

But a lot of it's about acquiring the social skills

and the sort of political know-how,

and ideas of taste and culture

that will enable them to fulfil a position when they come back home.

So, for example, Rome, it was always good to be there at Easter,

because that's when you had the ceremonies of Easter.

There was the washing of the feet on Maundy Thursday,

and then the great Mass on Easter Sunday.

And then go south to Naples for the period of Lent,

because there was more going on in Naples

and the climate was that much warmer.

And then the great thing was to be in Venice for Ascension-tide,

which was when you had the ceremony of Sposalizio.

And so you would go up north again for Ascension,

which, depending on when Easter was, would probably be sometime in May.

(DRUM BEATING)

(DRUMMING CONTINUES)

(HORNS JOIN)

(MAN SPEAKING IN ITALIAN OVER LOUDSPEAKER)

(MAN YELLS)

LUCY WHITAKER: In the 12th century, the pope gave the doge a gold ring

and the right to marry the sea,

as a sign of his lordship over it.

Ascension Day is very important for the Venetians,

because it is the day that they celebrate the Marriage of the Sea.

This painting shows the occasion of the Marriage of the Sea,

but what we see here is that the Bucentauro,

which was the doge's ceremonial galley,

has returned from the ceremony and is about to dock.

We have an open view of the figures.

We have them arranged on two decks.

So the most senior - the procurators and senators in red at the top,

with the doge.

And then, below - just a little bit below -

on the next open deck you have the nobility in black.

So you have this wonderful reflection of the society of Venice

in the Bucentauro.

You see onlookers everywhere. They're right up the Campanile.

At the very top there are figures seated,

with their feet very perilously over the edge, watching.

And at the corner you see one man with a telescope to his eyes,

keeping a watch on what's going on.

It's very typical of Canaletto, the way in which he crops a view

so that boats seem to continue out of it.

And this gives the sense that you're actually standing there,

perhaps taking a photograph,

and that the whole ceremony is continuing all around you.

But, of course the most important thing about this and about Canaletto

is that when he painted light, it's with this absolute clarity.

So we have spring light here, which is clear and wonderful,

and the light er filters through all the gondolas.

You see reflected light and sunlight interchanging

as your eye goes over the painting.

Everything that's important is in that view.

It summarises Venice completely.

ROSIE RAZZALL: In the 1740s the War of Austrian Succession

interrupted the flow of visitors to Venice,

and so there were not only fewer tourists coming to the city,

but it was also more difficult to ship paintings back to Britain,

and so Canaletto was short of work.

Joseph Smith helped him at this time by giving him two major commissions.

The first for a series of five paintings of Roman views

that were finished in 1742,

and the second for a series of overdoor paintings

that declared Smith's allegiance to Palladianism in architecture.

But this wasn't really enough work,

and so in 1746 Canaletto decided to travel to London.

CHARLES BEDDINGTON: For an artist who made a living as a view painter,

I think he showed a remarkable reluctance to travel.

I mean, there's a note by a contemporary that, you know,

'Why would Canaletto bother to come to England?

Everybody who wants a painting by him has got one already.'

It's around this time that, in fact, the whole family disperses.

I mean, the two nephews both leave Venice

and go and live abroad as well.

But I think also an important element

is that I think that he himself had quite simply got bored.

He had spent the whole of the 1730s painting views of Venice,

and in the 1740s he shows every sign of agitation,

and he starts doing all sorts of different things.

He starts doing capriccio again,

he takes up printmaking.

I see the move to England in 1746 as part of this restlessness.

I think he wants a new challenge.

ROSIE RAZZALL: And he refigured the River Thames

as if it were the Grand Canal, showing London as if it were Venice.

And he was received in Britain with mixed success,

but he did have a great influence on topographical artists

working in the city.

And then, in 1755, he decided to come back to Venice,

where he remained for the rest of his life.

In the same year, 1755,

Joseph Smith published the catalogue of his library,

the Bibliotheca Smithiana,

that was published by his own Pasquali press.

And this listed the contents of his significant library -

his books, manuscripts, prints and albums of drawings -

and this was with the intention of finding a prestigious buyer.

LUCY WHITAKER: The young George III, who was Prince of Wales at the time,

had advisers and agents in Italy

seeking out works of art and books for his collection,

because of his interest in the visual arts.

Close advisers to him heard that Smith's library was er for sale,

and negotiations were opened,

and it was suggested that he might like to buy the library

for the sum of £10,000.

The Seven Years' War intervened, which interrupted negotiations.

They resumed in the spring of 1762, and by that stage

Smith had offered to sell not only the library

but also his entire collection of paintings, gems and books.

So the total of that would have been about 500 paintings,

and around 1,500 volumes.

By the end of 1762 the sale was finalised,

but now for a sum of £20,000, which was sold to George III,

who had come to the throne in 1760.

At the same time, George III bought Buckingham House -

now Buckingham Palace -

which he wanted to have as a private residence

for him and his growing family.

So it was, in a way,

a very happy coincidence that these paintings arrived.

ROSIE RAZZALL: After his return from Britain,

Canaletto carried on working in Venice,

making many drawings and paintings of the city,

and he was finally accepted to the Venetian Academy in 1763.

But we don't know a lot about his personal life. He never married,

and he seems to have been a relatively solitary figure

towards the end of his life.

Canaletto died in 1768 after an illness of five days,

in which his symptom was described as 'inflammation of the bladder',

and he's buried in the same church in San Lio in which he was baptised.

CHARLES BEDDINGTON: Canaletto was not the wealthy man

at the time of his death that one would expect him to be.

We have an inventory of his possessions made after he died,

which includes, as one would expect, a number of unfinished

or unworked canvases, but remarkably little else.

Since Consul Smith, you know, ended up as a very rich man indeed

and Canaletto very much didn't,

erm he may be an early example

of an artist who was very much exploited by his dealer.

LUCY WHITAKER: I think Canaletto is, first and foremost,

a great topographical artist.

He could record what he saw and observe with absolute precision.

But I think, on top of that, he could take reality

and create something imaginary and ideal and poetic

from the ordinary and the actual.

And I think he did that through his incredible expertise with paint.

subtitles by Deluxe