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Identification and Creation

Object Number
FA11
People
Giovanni Antonio Canal, called Canaletto, Italian (Venice, Italy 1697 - 1768 Venice, Italy)
Title
Alle Porte del Dolo
Classification
Prints
Work Type
print
Date
c. 1741
Culture
Italian
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/299984

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Etching printed in black ink on white antique laid paper
Technique
Etching
Dimensions
plate: 29.5 × 43.4 cm (11 5/8 × 17 1/16 in.)
Inscriptions and Marks
  • (not assigned): etched in lower margin, at left corner and to left of center: A. Canal f. / Ale Porte del Dolo.
  • inscription: Verso of secondary support, graphite: N. Coll. Oct. 1874
  • collector's mark: verso of secondary support, blue stamp with accession number in graphite below:
    FINE ARTS / DEPARTMENT OF / HARVARD COLLEGE [within a rectangular borderline] / 11

State, Edition, Standard Reference Number

State
Bromberg i/iii
Standard Reference Number
DeVesme 5, Bromberg 5

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Transfer from the Fine Arts Department, Harvard University
Object Number
FA11
Division
European and American Art
Contact
am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Descriptions

Commentary
From “Harvards's Art Museums: 100 Years of Collecting” ©1996 President and Fellows of Harvard College: The etching presents a panorama of Dolo, a town on the north bank of the Brenta River, halfway between Padua and Venice. We are standing at a lock, watching a burchiello ride the current downstream. The artist's contemporary, the Venetian dramatist Carlo Goldoni, has also left us a picture of the water-bus of their time: "a fine boat with looking-glasses, carving and pictures, that goes a mile in twenty minutes and where you can relax, sit down or doze in absolute security."

The etching is one of thirty-one plates by Canaletto that were published in 1745 as a set titled Vedute, altre prese da i luoghi, altre idealte (Views, Some Showing Actual Sites, Some Imaginary). All commentators have remarked upon the series's neglect of the artist's most popular painted subject, the city of Venice itself. Its representation was in great demand, especially by Milords on the Grand Tour who were directed to the artist by his close friend Joseph Smith, the British consul at Venice. Smith published the etchings, and after his death, when the plates were republished by Remondini in 1772, their emphasis on mainland sites was made explicit by the description in the editore's catalogue: “A series representing some views of places on the Brenta, others imaginary.”

In 1778 Remondini sold four views separately as "A stitched series of 4 prints black representing the Views of Dolo.” Curiously, while this subset contains the three views onto which the artist himself etched titles referring to Dolo, the fourth was The Portico with a Lantern, left untitled by the artist and never associated with Dolo by later commentators. Two other plates, however, have been identified as showing the town, albeit with the clock omitted from the campanile of San Rocco in the one and with the scene set in a mountainous landscape in the other. Ale Porte del Dolo came to Harvard within a set of four, but this set contains only one other of the views of Dolo, and all four are anything but later republications. All are first states of some of Canaletto's largest and most complex etched compositions, and three are of the utmost rarity, being working proofs, including an impression of the undivided plate of the Imaginary View of Venice. All four are inscribed: "N[orton] Coll[ection] Oct. 1874."

At that moment Charles Eliot Norton was just beginning his career teaching art history at Harvard. One course was on Venetian art, but he concluded his survey centuries earlier than the work of Canaletto. While Canaletto was despised as a painter by Norton’s mentor Ruskin and probably by Norton as well, he was valued for his representation of Venice prior to the city’s despoiling (as Ruskin and Norton saw it) by nineteenth-century modernizations and--worse--restorations. Thus it is not unexpected to find at Harvard prints by Canaletto, the only form of the artist’s views that would have been accessible to the limited budget of the fledgling teaching program. But most prints from the Fine Arts Department collection are minor compositions in mediocre impressions; why Canaletto is represented by his best etchings in superb proof states in perfect condition remains a mystery.

Publication History

  • Masterpieces of world art : Fogg Art Museum, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Busch-Reisinger Museum, 1997

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Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of European and American Art at am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu