Steadman, Philip;
(2025)
Canaletto's Camera.
[Book].
UCL Press: London, UK.
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Abstract
Canaletto's Camera explores the ways in which the great Venetian artist Antonio Canaletto (1697-1768) made use of the camera obscura - the forerunner of the photographic camera - as an aid to drawing and painting. It surveys Canaletto's contacts with contemporary Venetian and Paduan scientists, in particular Francesco Algarotti who wrote on Newton's philosophy and the camera obscura. Canaletto also relied on many measured drawings of Venetian buildings by his colleague Antonio Visentini, a debt that has not previously been recognised. Steadman proposes that Canaletto used the camera for two purposes: tracing from real scenes, and copying and collaging drawings and engravings by other artists. By analysing camera sketches made by Canaletto in a notebook, he shows how the artist traced views in Venice and then altered the real scenes in his finished drawings and paintings. By using a reconstructed eighteenth-century design of camera obscura, the author and his colleagues have made drawings of views that Canaletto painted in London. Steadman has recreated both a veduta (a real view) and a capriccio (a fantasy) using Canaletto's processes of 'photomontage'. The experiments are detailed in the book, shedding new light on the artist's procedures, and emphasising how weak and permeable the boundary is between the two types of picture.
| Type: | Book |
|---|---|
| Title: | Canaletto's Camera |
| ISBN-13: | 9781800088412 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.14324/111.9781800088412 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800088412 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © Author, 2025 licence. Details of the copyright ownership and permitted use of third-party material is given in the image (or extract) credit lines. Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher. If you would like to reuse any third-party material not covered by the book’s Creative Commons licence, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright owner. This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. This licence allows you to share and adapt the work for non-commercial use providing attribution is made to the author and publisher (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work) and any changes are indicated. Attribution should include the following information: Steadman, P. 2025. Canaletto’s Camera. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800088412 Further details about Creative Commons licences are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ |
| Keywords: | Canaletto, camera obscura, Venice, London |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment > Bartlett School Env, Energy and Resources |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10208729 |
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