Lagoon with House and Campanile

Bellotto was still a teenager when he painted this, finishing his training in the Venice workshop of his uncle, the celebrated view-painter Canaletto. The scene looks like a real spot on the Venetian lagoon, a house, a bell tower, a distant church low against the water, yet it is invented. Pictures like this were called capriccio, a view assembled from real buildings that never in fact stood together. What is already his own, and not his uncle's, is the cooler light, the heavier air and the quick, almost handwriting-like strokes he uses for leaves and weeds. The market for such lagoon views was enormous just then, feeding the foreign visitors who came to Venice wanting a painted souvenir to carry home.