Giacomo Francesco Zuccarelli was an Italian artist of the late Baroque or Rococo period. He is considered to be the most important landscape painter to have emerged from his adopted city of Venice during the mid-eighteenth century, and his Arcadian views became popular throughout Europe and especially in England where he resided for two extended periods. His patronage extended to the nobility, and he often collaborated with other artists such as Antonio Visentini and Bernardo Bellotto. In 1768, Zuccarelli became a founding member of the Royal Academy of Arts, and upon his final return to Italy, he was elected president of the Venetian Academy. In addition to his rural landscapes which frequently incorporated religious and classical themes, Zuccarelli created devotional pieces and on occasion did portraiture. Besides paintings, his varied output included etchings, drawings, and designs for tapestries as well as a set of Old Testament playing cards.
Giovanni Antonio Canal, commonly known as Canaletto, was an Italian painter from the Republic of Venice, considered an important member of the 18th-century Venetian school.
Bernardo Bellotto, was an Italian urban landscape painter or vedutista, and printmaker in etching famous for his vedute of European cities – Dresden, Vienna, Turin, and Warsaw. He was the student and nephew of the renowned Giovanni Antonio Canal Canaletto and sometimes used the latter's illustrious name, signing himself as Bernardo Canaletto. In Germany and Poland, Bellotto called himself by his uncle's name, Canaletto. This caused some confusion, however Bellotto’s work is more sombre in color than Canaletto's and his depiction of clouds and shadows brings him closer to Dutch painting.
Francesco Lazzaro Guardi was an Italian painter, nobleman, and a member of the Venetian School. He is considered to be among the last practitioners, along with his brothers, of the classic Venetian school of painting.
Ca' Rezzonico is a palazzo and art museum on the Grand Canal in the Dorsoduro sestiere of Venice, Italy. It is a particularly notable example of the 18th century Venetian baroque and rococo architecture and interior decoration, and displays paintings by the leading Venetian painters of the period, including Francesco Guardi and Giambattista Tiepolo. It is a public museum dedicated to 18th-century Venice and one of the 11 venues managed by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia.
The Gallerie dell'Accademia is a museum gallery of pre-19th-century art in Venice, northern Italy. It is housed in the Scuola della Carità on the south bank of the Grand Canal, within the sestiere of Dorsoduro. It was originally the gallery of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, the art academy of Venice, from which it became independent in 1879, and for which the Ponte dell'Accademia and the Accademia boat landing station for the vaporetto water bus are named. The two institutions remained in the same building until 2004, when the art school moved to the Ospedale degli Incurabili.
The Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, Germany, displays around 750 paintings from the 15th to the 18th centuries. It includes major Italian Renaissance works as well as Dutch and Flemish paintings. Outstanding works by German, French, and Spanish painters of the period are also among the gallery's attractions.
Antonio Visentini was a Venetian architectural designer, painter and engraver, known for his architectural fantasies and capricci, the author of treatises on perspective and a professor at the Venetian Academy.
Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio was an Italian painter of the High Renaissance from Lombardy, who worked in the studio of Leonardo da Vinci. Boltraffio and Bernardino Luini are the strongest artistic personalities to emerge from Leonardo's studio. According to Giorgio Vasari, he was of an aristocratic family and was born in Milan.
Events from the year 1740 in art.
Events from the year 1744 in art.
The Royal Collection of the British royal family is the largest private art collection in the world.
Joseph Smith, often known as Consul Smith, was the British consul at Venice from 1744 to 1760. He was a patron of artists, most notably Canaletto, a collector and connoisseur, banker to the British community at Venice, and a major draw on the British Grand Tour. His collection of drawings was bought for George III of Great Britain and forms a nucleus of the Royal Collection of drawings in the Print Room at Windsor Castle.
Utagawa Toyoharu was a Japanese artist in the ukiyo-e genre, known as the founder of the Utagawa school and for his uki-e pictures that incorporated Western-style geometrical perspective to create a sense of depth.
The Stonemason's Yard is an early oil painting by Giovanni Antonio Canal, better known as Canaletto. It depicts an informal scene in Venice, looking over a temporary stonemason's yard in the Campo San Vidal set up for the construction of Andrea Tirali's facade of the church of San Vidal, and across the Grand Canal towards the church of Santa Maria della Carità. Painted in the mid to late 1720s, it is now in the collection of the National Gallery in London and is considered one of Canaletto's finest works.
The Grand Canal at the Church of the Salute is an oil on canvas painting by Canaletto. It is a Rococo landscape painting, completed circa 1740. It measures 151 by 121 centimeters and is now in the Emil Georg Bührle collection, Zurich, Switzerland.
The Grand Canal in Venice from Palazzo Flangini to Campo San Marcuola is a painting by Canaletto in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California. Painted around 1738, it may have been commissioned by the English merchant and art collector Joseph Smith (1682–1770).
Dresden From the Right Bank of the Elbe Below the Augustus Bridge is an oil painting on canvas executed in 1748 by the Italian urban landscape painter Bernardo Bellotto. It depicts the view of Dresden from the right bank of the River Elbe, including the Dresden Frauenkirche, the Dresden Cathedral, and the Augustus Bridge. One year earlier, he painted another piece titled Dresden From the Right Bank of the Elbe Above the Augustus Bridge, looking in the other direction from above the Augustus Bridge. Both of the paintings are in the permanent collection of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister. The paintings have proved invaluable in rebuilding parts of the city that were destroyed during the World War II.
The Pra della Valle in Padua is a 1741-1746 oil on canvas painting of the Prato della Valle in Padua by Canaletto. It entered the collection of the Milanese nobleman Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli and from there it passed its present owner, the Museo Poldi Pezzoli in Milan.
The Election of Stanisław August is a 1778 oil-on-canvas painting by Bernardo Bellotto, produced to the instructions of its subject Stanisław August Poniatowski and now hanging alongside twenty-two other paintings by the artist in the Senatorial Hall of the Royal Castle, Warsaw, also known as the Canaletto Hall. A first version produced in 1776 had not met with Stanisław August's approval and instead was given to Crown Marshal Franciszek Rzewuski; it is now in the National Museum, Poznań. Both works show the 1764 Polish–Lithuanian royal election, the last free royal election in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Canaletto, The Grand Canal - Looking North-East from Santa Croce to San Geremia, c. 1730–40, Windsor, Royal Collection
Antonio Visentini, The Canal Grande from Santa Croce to the East, 1742, Windsor, Royal Collection
Follower of Canaletto, The Grand Canal facing Santa Croce, post-1738, London, National Gallery
