The Basilica of Maxentius and the Church of Santa Francesca Romana

When Canaletto sketched these ruins as a young man in Rome, around 1719 or 1720, nobody called them the Basilica of Maxentius. Until the early 19th century the huge brick arches on the left were taken for the Temple of Peace, built by the Flavian emperors after their victory over Jerusalem. At the right edge is the pale 17th-century front of Santa Francesca Romana, with the church's medieval bell tower behind the wall. The convent beside it has Venetian chimneys, an invention the painter brought from home. The canvas came decades after that drawing, and its hand is still argued over. Some scholars have given it to his nephew Bernardo Bellotto, others to his workshop, while the museum now leans to Canaletto himself. It was bought in London in 1908 together with a small Colosseum of the same size, on the advice of Ettore Modigliani, director of the Brera gallery in Milan.