Capriccio with Ruins and Porta Portello, Padua

A capriccio was a licence to invent. Painters in Canaletto's Venice used the word for a made-up view, a scene built from architecture that never actually stood together, and this is one of them. The solid, real thing in it is the Porta Portello, the grand 16th-century water gate that still guards a canal on the edge of Padua, on the mainland about 25 miles west of Venice. Canaletto lifts that recognizable gate out of Padua and sets it among crumbling classical ruins he made up, with small figures going about their day between the broken columns. He built his fame on the opposite habit, on views so exact you could match them to the street. Here he lets the surveyor rest and simply arranges stone for the pleasure of it. The gate itself is real enough that you can still walk up to it in Padua today.