Venice: The Grand Canal facing Santa Croce

This early Venetian view is the work of a teenager. Bernardo Bellotto was about 16 and learning the trade in the studio of his uncle, the famous view-painter Canaletto, when he made it around 1738, following one of his uncle's own compositions closely, down to the broad ceremonial barge on the left. But his own eye is already there: a cooler, more silvery light, thick loaded strokes building the clouds and the greenish water. Bellotto would later leave Italy and become the great topographer of Dresden, Vienna and Warsaw. This picture entered the National Gallery in 1910 catalogued as a Canaletto, and was long dismissed as a mere follower's work.