Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo

In July 1725 the painter Alessandro Marchesini, who bought pictures in Venice for Stefano Conti, a merchant from Lucca, wrote to his client about a young view painter whose work was astonishing everyone in the city. Conti was a widower who no longer travelled, and he wanted views of Venice to remember it by. Over about a year Canaletto painted four for him, and this square was one of them, dated 1726. It is the campo in front of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, the great Dominican church where the funerals of the doges were held. The gallery points out what Canaletto does with the perspective here. Using the camera obscura, he brings the far side of the square forward, so the buildings at the back stand close and clear. The four Conti pictures stayed together. By 1832 they were in the London house of Robert Townley Parker, later they belonged to a collector in Montreal, and today all four hang in this room.