Canaletto in Venice
Until January 7 2007; The Queen’s Gallery, Edinburgh

If you’re a fan of art from centuries gone by, you’ll be used to exhibitions drawn from all corners of the globe; a study here and an unrelated sketch there; smoke-stained varnish and paper with a fungal life of its own. The curators do what they can to assemble a coherent group of works, and depend on us to join the dots between them.

Not so at the Queen’s Gallery. Although I’ve never knowingly stood for God Save The Queen, my appreciation of the Royal Collection has grown substantially since Holyrood Palace became home to a royal gallery. Best suited to drawings and small paintings, the intimate space has played host to immaculately preserved masterpieces, almost direct from the studios of their makers.

The current Canaletto show is no exception. Right from the start of Canaletto’s career, his Venice-based mentor, British Consul Joseph Smith, collected his drawings and paintings. Carefully preserved in the consul’s library, Canaletto’s drawings were safe from sunlight and the ravages of time. In 1762, well before either man died, George III persuaded Smith to part with his precious collection, and 50 paintings and 140 drawings went straight into the Royal Collection.

The 14 paintings and 71 drawings on show in Edinburgh look so at home in their surroundings that you’d think the gallery was made for them. Self-contained sets of drawings fill the front gallery space, and a complete set of 12 painted views of the Grand Canal lines the back wall from end to end. Two spectacular pendants face each other across the room, their rich tonalities more than a match for their vivid blue backdrop.

Trained by his father as a theatrical scenery painter, Canaletto was quick to corner the 18th century tourist market for scenes of Venice. The city was a magnet for Europeans on the Grand Tour, and with the exception of a ten-year stint in England, Canaletto made a healthy living from painting and drawing his watery home town.

Following a detailed comparison between Canaletto’s scenes and their present-day realities, the show’s captions point out all the artist’s topographical inconsistencies. Spires were moved left or right, bridges swung round into view, and buildings crammed cleverly together, to achieve maximum impact and optimum saleability.

This precise academic exercise would work a whole lot better if we could see for ourselves the photographs of present-day Venice. Otherwise, talk of altered angles and creeping facades soon cause all but the most dedicated Venetian to glaze over.

The idea is to show that far from acting as a photographic machine, Canaletto was a very creative painter. Some of his shadows are incredibly adventurous, striking diagonally across buildings to cut them in two. In one painting, the complex shadow of a gothic spire cuts right through the arched door and stained glass window of a central church.

Canaletto’s precise style of painting is what made him famous, but it’s that same precision which can cause the eye to wander restlessly across the surface of his later paintings and drawings, until it finds the daring curlicues of his hastily-drawn people. These dynamic little figures are rendered in a few quick squiggles of the pen, or with assured dabs of the brush, and are a further clue to the fierce creative impulses which Canaletto kept in check.

The final clue is in his cappricci – scenes which combine real places with fantastical settings. Canaletto floats buildings romantically in the lagoon, and transplants Roman ruins into Venice. To an outsider’s eyes, it’s hard to tell the difference between real and imaginary; Canaletto’s achievement was to blur the boundaries totally between the two.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 25.06.06