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Hardback – 297 x 210mm – 192 pages

Colour illustrations throughout

ISBN 9781843682066

On the Grand Tour in spring 1731, Lord John Russell, future duke of Bedford, commissioned four paintings from Canaletto, a respectable but not exceptional order for a fashionable souvenir. Yet the final haul was a princely twenty-four paintings. Maybe it was Russell’s marriage to one of the richest heiresses of the day, Lady Diana Spencer, or even his entirely unexpected inheritance of the dukedom of Bedford; whatever the reason, the result was the largest and finest set of paintings of Venice by the greatest of the city’s portraitists.

This unprecedented series was first installed in Bedford House, London, and then moved to Woburn in 1792, where it has remained ever since. For the first time, the paintings will be shown outside the Abbey, in a ground-breaking exhibition at the Holburne Museum, Bath. For the first time too, they are being published in full and in colour. Canaletto: Painting Venice reproduces all the pictures in near A4 size, with scores of close-up details (many in double page spread) and comparative illustrations. An extensive introduction and commentary by a leading specialist, Charles Beddington, tell the story of this magnificent commission and its execution, in particular the relationship to Canaletto’s only surviving sketchbook.

Canaletto: Painting Venice is one of the richest and most important publications ever devoted to Canaletto: a spectacular visual introduction to his incomparable art, and to the beauties of Venice itself.