Reality and Fantasy: Architecture in Paintings of Italian Cities

Fascinating online lecture from the National Gallery looking at the architecture of Venice as represented by the paintings of Canaletto.

I must admit from the title and description I thought the talk was going to be wider ranging and look at how artists had used a variety of cities whereas in fact it just looked at Venice. That being said, Oliver Garland took us on tour of the city via the paintings of Canaletto describing the buildings and their structure.

I thought I knew a lot about the city but learnt a lot from this talk particularly about the materials that were used and why they were used. I had never realised before that all the palaces where built around four principle spine walls and that facades had no load bearing function to keep the weight spread over the foundations. This meant the façade could have lots of windows and could be adapted and updated easily.

This was a nice nostalgic hour imagining a walk round the city and learning a bit more about the place.

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