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Capriccio: A Palace with a Courtyard by the Lagoon
Also known as: Imaginary View of a Palace on the Shore of the Lagoon; The Villa Contarini
About the Artwork
Privileged young Europeans embarking on the Grand Tour during the 1700s invariably visited Venice, where they purchased paintings, prints, and drawings to commemorate their trip. Canaletto’s vedute (view paintings) were particularly desirable as mementos of the city. This drawing is a capriccio—an artistic fantasy of architecture and landscape. Canaletto often referred to actual buildings in his capricci, manipulating and combining them to create his invented views. The palatial structure in this composition appropriates the neo-Palladian portal to the Palazzo Tasca in Venice; however, the lagoon, peasant figures, and architectural details are artifice. Traces of Canaletto’s graphite underdrawing are visible in the cloudy sky, as are the black chalk lines he carefully ruled in before delineating the building with pen and brush. The brown ink outlines of the composition contrast with Canaletto’s tints of transparent gray wash, which animate the drawing through their effect of flickering sunlight. Though three large, painted capricci paintings share compositional elements with this drawing, it is unclear whether it is a preliminary study, or an independent work of art.
Provenance
?-?: (Obach & Co. (est. 1884), London, sold to Dr. Guy Bellingham Smith.) before 1911-1927: Dr. Guy Bellingham Smith [1856-?], London, UK. 1927: (Frederik Muller & Co., Amsterdam, sold July 6, 1927, cat. no. 9.) possibly 1927-1930: (Thomas Agnew and Sons (est. 1817), Ltd., London, UK, sold to The Cleveland Museum of Art, Jan. 1930.) 1930-: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH.
Exhibition history
Antonio Canaletto: 1697-1768. Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA (organizer). Drawings in the Classic and Romantic Tradition before 1830. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 7, 1932-January 8, 1933). Art of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 9-December 2, 1934). Fourth Anniversary Exhibition: Six Centuries of Drawings. Lyman Allyn Art Museum, New London, CT (organizer) (March 2-April 15, 1936). Tiepolo and His Contemporaries. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (organizer) (March 14-April 24, 1938). Old Master Drawings from the Museum Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 4-March 26, 1939). Exhibition of Eighteenth-Century Italian Landscape Painting and Its Influence in England. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT (organizer) (January 18-February 25, 1940). Drawings by Old Italian Masters. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 5, 1940-February 25, 1941). Drawings from the Museum Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 4-April 27, 1941). The Silver Jubilee Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 23-September 28, 1941). Italian Drawings, 1330-1780. Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA (organizer) (December 1-20, 1941). Drawings from the Museum Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 17-August 24, 1942). Topographical Viewpoint. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 30-December 18, 1945). Views of Venice. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 11-April 26, 1953). Department of Prints and Drawings Opening Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (March 3, 1958-October 11, 1959). Italian and French Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 13, 1959-February 2, 1960). Canaletto and Bellotto. Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA (organizer) (August 2-31, 1960). Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 11-September 10, 1963). Eighteenth-Century Venetian Drawings From Correr Museum. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA (organizer) (January 21-February 16, 1964). Canaletto. Art Gallery of Ontario (organizer) (October 17-November 15, 1964); National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ont.,, Canada (December 4, 1964-January 10, 1965); Montréal Museum of Fine Arts (January 29-February 28, 1965). Prints and Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 6-September 9, 1965). Italian Prints and Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 30-March 26, 1968). Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 11-October 21, 1968). 33 Etchings and Related Works of Canaletto. Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA (organizer) (March 31-May 21, 1979). Venice as City and Theater. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 27-April 21, 1985). Object Lessons: Cleveland Creates an Art Museum. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 7-September 8, 1991). Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 27-October 17, 2000); The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY (May 23-August 19, 2001); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX (October 14, 2001-January 6, 2002). Treasures on Paper from the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 9-June 8, 2014). Imagination in the Age of Reason. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 28, 2024-March 2, 2025).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Antonio Canaletto (Italian, 1697–1768)
- Date
- c. 1750–55
- Medium
- pen and brown ink and brush and gray and black washes over traces of graphite (?); framing lines in pen and brown and black ink
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 26.9 x 42.1 cm (10 9/16 x 16 9/16 in.)
- Type
- Drawing
- Classification
- Drawing
- Department
- Drawings
- Credit line
- Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
- Accession no.
- 1930.23
More by Antonio Canaletto in museum collections
Capriccio: A Street Crossed by Arches (recto) Sketches of Doorway, Staircase and Second Floor of Building (verso)
Antonio Canalettoc. 1720 · Drawing
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 7, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Open-access museum record · AT-00000300
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