Description
Employing a wide variety of tones and marks, Canaletto expertly depicted this imagined scene with its smattering of actual ancient ruins. A follower of the artist later copied this important etching to produce the nearly identical painting on the right. The painted version, however, omitted or reinterpreted most of the foreground figures. A new scene of a man standing next to an architectural fragment near the building to the right has also been added, emphasizing the visitor’s interest in the antique.
Accession Number
159741
Medium
Etching in black on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 30 × 43.4 cm (11 13/16 × 17 1/8 in.); Plate: 30.4 × 43.6 cm (12 × 17 3/16 in.); Sheet: 43.3 × 58.1 cm (17 1/16 × 22 7/8 in.)
Classification
etching
Credit Line
The Joseph Brooks Fair Collection