dp canaletto anglais - copie - Musée Maillol

3- EXTRACTS FROM THE CATALOGUE
• THE VENICE SKETCHBOOK
by Annalisa Perissa Torrini, director of the Cabinet of Prints and Drawings of the Accademia Gallery,
Venice
The extraordinary sketchbook of Canaletto’s drawings, unique in the history of 18 th -century Venetian
art, has been in the keeping of the Cabinet of Prints and Drawings of the Accademia Gallery in Venice
since 1949. It was a donation by Don Guido Gagnola, from the village of Gazzada Schianno in the
Varese region of Lombardy, who said he had received it from his father. His father had owned it since
1895 but didn’t know where it had come from 1 .
This precious volume, already bound at the time, was authenticated in August 1840 by Giuseppe
Borsato, who unfortunately was to put his heavy stamp on every page.
Not long after the sketchbook entered the Accademia collections, Vittorio Moschini 2 published two
articles about it, and a facsimile edition was produced by Terisio Pignatti in 1958, then by Giovanna
Nepi Scirè in 1997 3 . It has only been on public display in London in 1990, and in Venice in 1982, 1995
and 1999. The critical value of this jewel of the art of drawing – important well beyond its 18 th -century
context – is far greater than its artistic merit. Indeed it is hardly mentioned in the numerous
monographs and catalogues dedicated to the work of Canaletto, in which the sketches it contains are
treated as just part of the body of his some 500 drawings.
The sketches in this book are very precise and made with great care. They are preparatory drawings
representing the immediacy of a view, which will then be transformed in the painter’s mind when he
makes the canvases that are supposed to reproduce reality. In this respect they show the process of
Canaletto’s thinking, from the first idea to its development on paper, then on to the finished canvas.
The drawings are annotated with information and observations that he will use when he turns the
sketch into a painting. They reveal the way he in which he develops his works, which share a
distinctive perspective based on a gradual reduction in the planes, with shortened silhouettes on the
horizon. Based on topographical precision, Canaletto’s creative intelligence manages to combine all
the different elements very convincingly. His notes include the names of palaces and shops,
indications of a ferry or a gondola repair workshop, or he gives the exact number of windows or
columns. He doesn’t forget to note down the colours – brown, white, yellow, black, off-white, red,
ochre or yellow ochre – indicating whether their tones are light or dark. He also indicates sizes:
“wider”, “a bit longer”, “narrower”, “correct”. Materials, too, are mentioned – lead, stone, brick, wood
– and sites and even signs. When a panorama can’t be kept to one page, he divides it into sections
that are developed on different pages, which he calls “strips”: “first strip on left”, or “first strip on
1 Cf. G. Nepi Scirè, Accademia Galleries. History of the Drawings collections Milan, 1982, p. 17-18, 24, note 186. Letters
from 28 February and 15 May 1949 are conserved in the Archive of the Superintendence, Accademia Galleries, 2, Dons et
legs 118/33, Book of the sketches of Canaletto donated by Don Guido Gagnola di Gaza from Schianto (Varese).
2 A book of Canaletto sketches donated to the Accademia Galleries in Venice, in “Bollettino d’Arte”, 1949, p. 279, and the
book of Canaletto sketches to the Venetian Galleries, in “Arte Veneta”, 1950, p. 57-75.
3 T. Pignatti, The Notebook of Canaletto Sketches at the Venice Galleries, 1958; G. Nepi Scirè, Canaletto’s Notebook,
Venice, 1997; Canaletto. The Venetian Notebook, edited by A. Perissa Torrini, Venice, 2012.
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