London: Greenwich Hospital from the North Bank of the Thames

Canaletto had built his name selling views of Venice to British aristocrats on the Grand Tour. When war in Europe in the 1740s dried up that stream of visitors, he did the sensible thing and followed his customers home, spending most of the years from 1746 to 1755 in England. This is London seen through Venetian eyes, painted around 1753. He set himself on the north bank of the Thames, on the Isle of Dogs, looking across the water at Christopher Wren's great hospital for old sailors. Inigo Jones's white Queen's House sits in the gap at the centre, with the Royal Observatory on the hill behind. Small touches, like the hospital crane at the left, show he had stood on the spot.