Capriccio con palazzo (c.1754)

Canaletto (1697-1768)

Capriccio con palazzo (English Landscape Capriccio with a Palace)
c.1754
Oil on canvas, 134 x 108.8 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington

Sun pours across a landscape with trees and plants growing around and on an arched stone ruin, a bridge and river, and, in the distance, buildings along a flat-topped hill carpeted with grass in this vertical painting. Tiny in scale in the landscape, about two dozen men, women, and children wear dresses and clothing in shades of tan, brown, turquoise, cream white, black, red, and mustard yellow. Close to us, the arched ruins, possibly of an aqueduct, are nearly hidden by tall trees, bushes, and growth hanging from its deck. The trees growing up in front of the ruins nearly span the height of the painting and take up most of the left half of the composition. A river winds from the lower right corner into the distance to our right, passing under a bridge in the middle distance on the right edge of the painting. The shallowly arched bridge crosses the river in front of a long block of a building with rows of windows and arched arcades. The flat-topped hill rises in the center distance. There, a freestanding arch could be another ruin. Buildings with brown walls and terracotta-red roofs, along with the pointed spire of a church, are contained within a town wall a little farther down the hill from the arch. More churches with spires are nestled into the valley to our left of the hill, extending into the distance. The people are scattered through the landscape, and they all have pale skin. Closest to us, a man and woman stand near a black and white dog that barks at a pair of swans in the river, at the bottom center of the composition. A woman nearby bends over a basket on the ground, and a man with a long staff, tucked into the vegetation near the aqueduct, looks on. More people sit, stand, or play by the riverbank closer to the bridge or look at the water from the bridge itself. On the river is an elaborately decorated, long, narrow boat like a gondola. One person in the boat props open a yellow and white parasol; another, who rows the boat, wears a blue and yellow outfit with a cap like an overturned flower blossom. The horizon comes about a third of the way up the composition and the sky above is brilliant topaz blue. (NGA)