Imaginary View of Venice, houses at left with figures on terraces, a domed church at center in the background, boats and boat-sheds below, and a seated man observing from a wall at right in the foreground, from "Views" (Vedute altre prese da i luoghi altre ideate da Antonio Canal)

When it was painted

In 1741 Canaletto turned forty-four. He had made his name painting views of Venice, and his buyers were mostly British travelers. The man who connected him with them was Joseph Smith, an English merchant and collector living in Venice.

In the early 1740s Canaletto also picked up the etching needle. In etching, the artist draws lines through a coating on a copper plate, and acid bites them into the metal. Over several years he made thirty-one etchings, published as a set around 1744. They make up nearly all of his work as a printmaker.

The title plate of the set dedicates the prints to Joseph Smith, Consul of His Britannic Majesty. Smith became British consul in Venice in 1744. The title says that some views were taken from real places and others were invented. This scene is one of the invented ones, built from pieces of what you might see in Venice.

In 1746, soon after the prints appeared, Canaletto moved to London and spent years painting English views. In 1762 Smith sold his collection of Canaletto's paintings and prints to King George III. They remain in the British Royal Collection today.

The Met's record notes that this impression was printed from the undivided plate. It entered the museum in 1973. Look again at the man on the wall at the right. He is gazing out over a Venice that looks completely real and exists nowhere at all.