Canaletto S Camera

Canaletto's Camera

Did Canaletto paint what he saw, or what he wanted us to see? Exploring the boundary between observation and invention. Canaletto's Camera provides a revelatory look at how the Venetian master Antonio Canaletto (1697-1768) used the camera obscura, a precursor to the modern camera, to create his meticulous cityscapes. Drawing on new research, Steadman examines Canaletto's connections to contemporary scientists and his reliance on measured architectural drawings, discovering previously unrecognized techniques that shaped his iconic views of Venice and London. By analyzing Canaletto's sketches and reconstructing an 18th-century camera obscura, Steadman and his colleagues have recreated the artist's process, demonstrating how he traced real scenes, altered them in his finished works, and even engaged in a form of early photomontage. Through digital overlays and side-by-side comparisons with contemporary photographs, the book challenges assumptions about Canaletto's realism and artistic manipulation. Lavishly illustrated and deeply engaging, Canaletto's Camera is a compelling read for art historians, scholars of optical devices, and those fascinated by the intersection of art and science.

Canaletto's Camera

Canaletto's Camera explores the ways in which the great Venetian artist Antonio Canaletto (1697-1768) made use of the camera obscura - the forerunner of the photographic camera - as an aid to drawing and painting. It surveys Canaletto's contacts with contemporary Venetian and Paduan scientists, in particular Francesco Algarotti who wrote on Newton's philosophy and the camera obscura. Canaletto also relied on many measured drawings of Venetian buildings by his colleague Antonio Visentini, a debt that has not previously been recognised. Steadman proposes that Canaletto used the camera for two purposes: tracing from real scenes, and copying and collaging drawings and engravings by other artists. By analysing camera sketches made by Canaletto in a notebook, he shows how the artist traced views in Venice and then altered the real scenes in his finished drawings and paintings. By using a reconstructed eighteenth-century design of camera obscura, the author and his colleagues have made drawings of views that Canaletto painted in London. Steadman has recreated both a veduta (a real view) and a capriccio (a fantasy) using Canaletto's processes of 'photomontage'. The experiments are detailed in the book, shedding new light on the artist's procedures, and emphasising how weak and permeable the boundary is between the two types of picture.

Canaletto, the Complete Paintings