Warwick Castle, East Front from the Courtyard

By 1746 the war spreading across Europe had thinned out the English gentlemen who used to buy Canaletto's Venice views on their Grand Tour, so he did the practical thing and followed his customers home to London. This is one of five pictures Francis Greville, Lord Brooke, paid him to make of Warwick Castle, his medieval seat in the English Midlands. Canaletto brought the same clear, measured light he used on the Grand Canal to a damp English courtyard, laying out Guy's Tower, the clock tower and the gatehouse as precisely as a surveyor. Account books from Lord Brooke's bank still record the payments, across at least two visits the Venetian made to Warwick between 1748 and 1752.