61. Venice: Piazza San Marco from
a Corner of the Basilica, c. 1726-1728.
Oil on canvas, 172.7 x 134 cm.
The Royal Collection, London.
Canaletto: Portraitist of the Serenissima
Canaletto then returned to the Grand Canal’s banks after having received the warmest of welcomes in the princely abodes of the English capital. He left his remarkable plates of the Vauxhall Gardens, his paintings of Whitehall, Northumberland House, Eton College and the Thames back in England. Today, they bear witness to his passage across the Channel in the galleries of Windsor Castle, Dudley House, Devonshire House, Sion House, Hampton Court, the Soane Museum of Montague House, the National Gallery, as well as so many private collections whose illustrated catalogues have been published. When Canaletto, who was already of advanced age, returned to his country, he must have decided that he would settle, once and for all, in this city that he had made all his own a long time ago, but which he had, however, only abandoned on two occasions – that sweet Venice that, for his health, had an infinitely more agreeable climate and where he had yet to exhaust the countless scenes it offered. Yet London, seductive and flattering city of art and pleasure, with its wanton hospitality and insatiable consumption of his works, had inevitably rendered him more insular. Anglo-Saxon influence had altered the Venetian, just as it had previously done to the French landscape engraver Joseph Goupy, an imitator of Salvatorello, the engraver Bernard Baron, the glass painter Joseph Rice, and the landscape artist Lambert, a faithful but lesser follower of Poussin. There were many other painters, sculptors and engravers who were conquered, one after the other, by the charms of the Anglo-Saxons.
Some time later, Canaletto did make another trip to London. This was most likely around 1751 if one believes the date that appears on the two plates signed by Muller, Views of London, Gardens of Vauxhall and Westminster Abbey, View from Somerset Garden. He, of course, did not have the same reasons and interests to defend as on his first visit. He worried less about the business practices of the ingenious but deceitful Joseph Smith. The English consul to Venice had for too many years received his canvases under the pretext of patronage, only to reap some fine silver by reselling them, at a very high price, to his countrymen from all the British counties where this good mercante had connections. After that time, Canaletto had never allowed any intermediary between his enthusiasts and himself. Direct transactions became very easy for him; he was highly in demand and unable to fill all of the requests he received. Perhaps one could likewise attribute this second English adventure on the banks of the River Thames to the sole desire to see some welcoming friends, such as the Duke of Richmond, who had been such generous patrons from London high society and the neighbouring districts.
Canaletto’s second trip to London coincided with Bernardo Bellotto’s arrival in the British capital city. It is quite probable that the uncle accompanied his beloved nephew during his trips abroad in later years. There is every reason to believe that the two relatives bid one another an effusive goodbye in Germany, perhaps in the city of Munich, of which Canaletto had painted an entire cityscape. Today, this painting appears in this city’s art gallery. The younger then headed north to pursue a career as a court painter to kings, alternating between greatness and dire straits in a number of German principalities. The elder faithfully headed back to cara Venezia, making short stops in Verona and Padua, where he had most likely been sent to a wet nurse during the first hours of his life. It was thought that young children could not be healthily raised in Venice where, according to what people said, the air was not conducive to their growth and prosperity. The noble, indolent and always captivating Republic of the lagoons anxiously awaited the return of its painter, wishing to offer him her perennial tenderness that, throughout his life, he so astutely recognized and hailed as a devotee to her beauty. If Venice did not house its grand Canaletto in the Procuratie, as it had done for Sebastiano Ricci; if she did not allow him to live grandiosely, as we often say; if, in the end, she let him die in his modest house on calle San Vito; at least she warmly welcomed her illustrious portraitist and allowed him to end his days in a placid solitude and a well-being as complete as can be desired. And, in spite of his advanced years, Canaletto went on with his work. He added a great many canvases that his enthusiasts purchased with pounds and pounds of gold ducats.
It would be rather difficult to make a characteristic distinction between the first productions of his youth and those after his return from England. But it seems that the passing years had not detracted from his freshness or brilliance of vision, no more had they lessened his desire to create. The subjects that he painted for the art enthusiasts include capriciously draped black gondolas, the cortège of boats accompanying the Bucintoro on the morning of the Ascension, the perspective that disappears behind the Rialto Bridge seen along the Grand Canal from the midpoint between the Labia and Foscari palaces, the commerce under mushroom-shaped tents in the Piazza, flaunting their disorder of cloths, lace and crystal, the strollers outside the Procuratie, the still standing San Geminiano Church, Saint Mark’s phenomenal shrine, the staircase of the giants, the Salute which he dearly enjoyed painting at any time of day and in any lighting, the grassy marketplace, the poor neighbourhoods of Saint Nicholas, the Apostles’ square, the basket makers, men playing bowls, lazzaroni, matrones, children and nobles in wigs and bauta. Everything was or became an excuse for painting or engraving. He approached his work with energy and subtlety, adding a personal, spiritual touch. His indefatigable genius pleasurably contemplated his favourite scenes until his life took an extreme decline.