Through a group of masterpieces in the National Gallery Collection, which spans the artist's working life, and clusters of works relating to them, this book explores Canaletto's painting technique - the shorthand he developed for architectural detail and for figures, the way the skies and water are painted - and the larger question of his treatment of the topography of his native city. This selection of pictures - including contemporary maps and photographs of modern Venice, as well as sketchbooks, large detailed drawings, paintings and prints - takes the reader on a journey through Canaletto's Venice, along the Grand Canal from S. Simeone Piccolo and the upper reaches, past the Scuola di San Rocco to Palazzo Foscari and the Volta del Canal, on to the Carita and ending in St Mark's Square.

In the era of the Grand Tour, Venice was the cultural jewel in the crown of Europe and the epitome of decadence. This edited collection of eleven essays draws on a range of disciplines and approaches to ask how Venice’s appeal has affected Western culture since 1800.

"This exhibition catalogue considers the cultural context of the artist's development as a redute, or view painter. Essays by William Barcham, Eugene J. and Leslie Nichols Johnson, Alexandra Libby, and Stanton Thomas provide a context for the catalogue entries on the genre pictures, landscapes, religious paintings, and the decorative arts made by Canaletto and his contemporaries. The result is a unique and multi-faceted portrait of a city at a critical moment in the history of art. A collaborative effort of the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art and The John and Mable Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida, Venice in the Age of Canaletto offers a fascinating look at sumptuous paintings, prints, and decorative arts from the famed floating city." --Book Jacket.

This book explores Venice as it was and Canaletto' s interpretation of it, as he created what have become the archetypal images of the most beautiful city in the world.

Venice holds a unique place in literary and cultural history. Barnes looks at the themes of war, occupation, resistance and fascism to see how the political background has affected the literary works that have come out of this great city. He focuses on key British and American writers, including Byron, Ruskin, Pound and Eliot.

From Canaletto to Tiepolo, eighteenth century Venetian painters created brilliant works of art that are now considered to be the last flowering of the long Venetian tradition of painting. This beautiful book provides an introduction to eighteenth century Venetian painting, discussing the various types of painting--portraiture, genre, landscape, history paintings and religious works--as well as the society, patronage and intellectual climate of Venice at this time.