Perspective View with Portico

In 1763 the Venice Academy of Fine Arts finally elected Canaletto, its most famous view-painter, to a chair of perspective. He was about 66. Custom required a gift of work in return, and here he did something a little surprising. Instead of one of the sunlit views of the real Venice that had made him rich selling to English visitors, he handed over an invention. The shadowy courtyard and portico recall the Ca' d'Oro, the house of gold on the Grand Canal, but he has rebuilt it in his head and set it in a place that never existed. He took two years to finish it. Other painters admired it enough to copy it many times over.