The Portico with the Lantern, from Vedute

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.

The Portico with the Lantern, from Vedute

Canaletto

1735/44

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

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

The Joseph Brooks Fair Collection