Marco Ricci

Marco Ricci learned to paint from his uncle Sebastiano, a famous Venetian decorator, and then went somewhere his uncle had not, into pure landscape. Born in Belluno in the Veneto hills in 1676, he is usually credited as the painter who started the Venetian landscape tradition, the storms, ruins and invented views that Canaletto's generation would carry to all of Europe.

In 1708 a British diplomat brought him to London, and on the way he stopped in the Netherlands to study Dutch landscape. In England he found unexpected work: painting stage scenery for Italian opera at the Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket, for productions by Scarlatti and others. He even made a sly little picture of an opera rehearsal, a room of singers and musicians at work.

Back in Venice he perfected the capriccio, a made-up scene that fits real Roman ruins into a landscape that never existed. He worked small, often in tempera and even in gouache on kidskin, and he died in Venice in 1730.