Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 21/9/2017)

Following a busy montage setting Buckingham Palace among an array of London landmarks, the camera serenely roves the Queen's Gallery as Rosie Razzall, Curator of Prints and Drawings for the Royal Collection, explains how paintings held by the trust are put on public display at the different palaces in London and the Home Counties. Senior Curator Lucy Whitaker notes that the Crown has assembled the largest collection of Canalettos in the world and this exhibition seeks to showcase his mastery of the landscape style and how he developed a picture from the initial sketch. However, it also examines the work of 18th-century contemporaries like Luca Carlevarijs, whose `A Capriccio View with a Shipyard' (c1710-14) typifies the style of view painting before Canaletto, which art dealer and historian Charles Beddington declares to be stiff and old-fashioned compared to `The Grand Canal Looking South-East from the Rialto to Ca'Foscari' (c.1724-25), which captures the genius for detail that made Canaletto one of the period's foremost landscapists.

However, as Lorenzo Pericolo, Professor of Art History at the University of Warwick, explains over `The Piazza Looking North-West with the Narthex of San Marco' (c.1723-24), Canaletto had a visual intelligence that allowed the optical accuracy and geometrical acuity of his paintings to comment on both the architecture of Venice and its history and status. This blend of draughtsmanship and imagination meant that he became a master of the `capriccio' style of combining the physical and the fanciful in canvases like `Capriccio View of the Courtyard of the Palazzo Ducale with the Scala dei Giganti' (1744).

Although its peak period of political power has passed by the 18th century, Venice remained a key destination for English aristocrats making the Grand Tour of Europe, with the annual carnival and the numerous opera houses being among its principal attractions. But, as soprano Jenny Bacon sings Vivaldi's `Tu M'Offendi' (1720) over views of carnival gondolas and masked tourists, it's clear that the architectural splendour of the city situated on the Grand Canal and the Lagoon also proved a major drawing point. Giorgio Tagliaferro, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Warwick, explains how Venice grew up on a series of small islands - each with a square containing a well and a church at their centre - and how tourists were astonished to see buildings of such ambition and majesty resting on pillars driven into the mud to give the impression that they were rising out of the water. But, as Whitaker points out, there was more to the city than leisure, as the area around San Marco housed the political and religious institutions, while the districts linked by the Rialto Bridge were inhabited by the merchants and foreign traders who produced the wealth that had once made Venice a great power.

Rosemary Sweet, Professor of Urban History at the University of Leicester, concurs that Venice had been a key port and a bulwark against the Ottoman Empire since medieval times. Supposedly founded by exiles fleeing the declining Roman Empire, it had forged a reputation for upholding liberty and had avoided military conquest, in spite of the havoc that periodically erupted across the Italian peninsula. Indeed, Venice's stability enabled it to establish trading links with the East that had seen it become synonymous with the luxurious and the exotic. But it was a political structure that allowed the Doge to rule with an aristocracy and a representational Grand Council that most intrigued British constitutionalists seeking to stabilise the country after the turmoil of the Civil War and the Glorious Revolution. Following a series of enchanting views of gliding gondolas, church interiors and bridges, Razzall returns the focus to Canaletto, who was born in the San Lio district in 1697 and followed his father Bernardo Canal into painting stage scenery. Beddington describes the family as upper-middle-class and notes that Canaletto (whose nickname means `Little Canal' to distinguish him from Bernardo) used its coat of arms as his signature in later life. Yet, he didn't frequent the city's social circles and devoted himself to providing for the three sisters with whom he had grown up in a small apartment that has since been identified from sketches of rooftops and chimneys like the one shown from the British Museum, which Canaletto had drawn from an upstairs window. It's presumed that any training he received came from his father, but a stay in Rome in 1719-20 persuaded him to abandon the theatre and he returned to Venice to register with the Painters Guild.

Initially, he produced caprice like `A Capriccio View with Ruins based on the Forum' (c.1725-33). But, as Pericolo reveals, he soon came to see his hometown as a rich subject and `Piazza San Marco Looking East towards the Basilica and the Campanile' (c.1723-24) typifies his habit of spurning a geographical reality in order to create his own variations on the urban layout. Yet, as Razzall demonstrates with the Windsor-kept sketches, `The Piazzetta looking towards San Giorgio Maggiore' and `The Piazzetta looking towards Santa Maria della Salute' (both c.1723-24), Canaletto always worked from a preparatory accuracy. This pair of drawings was produced as part of the first commission from Joseph Smith for six paintings and would have been used to get the client's approval of the subject matter and the approach.

A neat dissolve from line drawing to canvas allows Razzall to explain how Canaletto changed his mind while painting, as a column bearing the winged lion symbol of St Mark is omitted from the left side of the composition, while a column topped by a statue of St Theodosius, which an infrared image has revealed to have been drawn over in the sketch, is reinstated. Over close-ups of details within the images, Beddington lauds Canaletto's skill at depicting lighting effects and people going about their business. He also commends his way with capturing dogs, which he seemingly imported from Dutch art of the period.

Razzall gets to examine one of Canaletto's few surviving sketchbooks in the Accademia in Venice and shows how he continued views across the pages and annotated the illustrations to guide him when he came to start on the painting in his studio. She also highlights the looseness of his sketches of people and notes that Canaletto employed a similar freedom in paint and that this technique brought a narrative vibrancy to his work. Yet, while each figure was different, Beddington claims that they came to interest Canaletto less over time and he began to configure them from dots and dashes.

Although one contemporary averred that Canaletto painted al fresco, Whitaker confirms that he worked in his studio from sketches like `The Bacino di San Marco on Ascension Day' (c.1733-34) and his gift lay in being able to make items like `The Piazza from the Piazzetta with the Campanile and the South Side of San Marco' (1744) look so realistic. Claire Chorley, Paintings Conservator for the Royal Collections, delights in the contrasts between light and dark in this wonderfully detailed record of bustling human activity against a backdrop of such imposing religious architecture. She points out the impasted chickens in their coop and the bulge in the curtain of the Punch and Judy kiosk, as well as the fingerprint that Canaletto deliberately placed in the stonework of San Marco.

Over a shot of `The Grand Canal with Santa Maria della Salute looking East towards the Bacino' (1742-44), Whitaker challenges biographer Anton Maria Zanetti's contention that Canaletto frequently used a camera obscura to achieve his accuracy. Beddington points out that using apparatus that needed to be kept perfectly still on a canal would have been impossible. He also notes that while the camera obscura would have helped Canaletto establish the basics of a view, it would have been of little use for the details and he was too good an artist simply to rely on mechanical reproduction. While curating the exhibition, the Royal Collection team used infrared on sketches like `The Central Stretch of the Grand Canal' (c.1734) and `The Bacino looking West on Ascension Day' (c.1734) and Razzall reveals that the under-drawings seem to have been meticulously crafted using rulers and other tools in the studio from sketchbook images.

According to Beddington, Canaletto ran a busy studio with his father, two nephews and other artists being involved in the preparation of canvases that he completed. Chorley shows how he used a red base on quite coarsely woven canvases and employed a pinker base for the sky. She also points out how he left ruled lines on the canvas to ensure architectural accuracy. But, while he undoubtedly transferred skills taught by his father, Canaletto also learnt from such Cinquecento giants as Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese, and Tagliaferro uses `Venus with a Mirror' (c.1555) and `The Mystical Marriage of St Catherine of Alexandria' (c.1562-69) to explain the distinctive calibre of Venetian pigment and how this use of colour helped Canaletto achieve his lighting effects and the stone and water tones that are so crucial to his vision.

Whitaker further shows how Veronese's `The Feast of the House of Levi' (1573) had an influence on the work of Sebastiano Ricci and Gianbattista Tiepolo, with the former's `Heads of Christ and St John' (c.1725-30) perhaps being directly copied for the work that had originally adorned the refectory wall in the Basilica di Santi Giovanni e Paolo. Ricci became famous for works like `Juxtaposed Heads of a Young Man and a Boy' (c.1725-30), which exude an 18th-century vivacity that is also present in more devotional pictures like `The Adoration of the Kings' (1726) and Whitaker states that Ricci was a key figure in the transition from the Baroque and highlights the elegance of the black king standing to the right of the composition in sumptuous garments.

Educated at Westminster School, banker-turned merchant Joseph Smith made his fortune dealing in fish, meat and wine and established himself in the Palazzo Smith Mangilli Valmarana near the Rialto. Originally a book collector, he became fascinated with Venetian art and frequently commissioned works from the emerging talents, one of whom was Canaletto, who lived in the same part of the city and probably came to Smith's attention through his opera singer wife, Catherine Tofts (who was the first to sing Italian opera in Britain). Such was his status as a man about town that Smith featured in the book of Venetian types that nobleman Pietro Gradenigo commissioned from Giovanni Grevembroch. But, as Sweet reminds us, this respectable connoisseur was also a shrewd wheeler-dealer who bought and sold art for profit and the camera glides past the neatly mounted fruits of his labour on the walls of the Queen's Gallery.

These 12 pictures chart the length of the Grand Canal and begin with `The Canale di Santa Chiara looking North towards the Lagoon' (c.1722-23) and conclude with `The Mouth of the Grand Canal looking West from near the Carità' (c.1729-30). While Smith bought them for his own pleasure, Whitaker suggests that he placed them in a prominent place in his palazzo so that visitors could admire them and commission their own versions so he could take a cut of the fee.

Smith was an admirer of architect Andrea Palladio and playwright Carlo Goldoni. He also founded the Pasquale Press to produce books and prints and Beddington testifies to the importance of print-making in Venetian art. These volumes of etchings made Canaletto's views known across Europe and Razzall visits the shop of Gianni Basso to show how an 18th-century stampatore like Antonio Visentini would have worked. But, while Canaletto was hugely popular abroad (particularly in Britain), he found few takers in his own city, as potential customers could simply look out of the window and see the views for real.

Among those seeking a souvenir of his travels, however, was the 4th Duke of Bedford and Matthew Hirst, the curator of Woburn Abbey, recalls how he bought 24 Canalettos following his Grand Tour in 1731. Hirst shows us a receipt signed by both Joseph Smith and his London-based agent brother, John, before explaining why paintings like `View of the Entrance to the Arsenal' (c.1732) would have appealed to British tourists aware of their homeland's maritime dependency. As the century wore on, however, families and the nouveau riche began making their own tours of the continent and, as we see Pietro Longhi's `Blind-Man's Buff' (1744), Sweet suggests that the women of the day would have been less accepting of lower hygiene and lodging standards that their male counterparts.

However, as Razzall reveals, women were taken with pastel portraits like Rosalba Carriera's `Winter' (c.1726) and `Summer' (c.1744). As one of the few professional female artists in the city, she relied on Consul Smith to sell works like `Self-Portrait' (c.1744), which was drawn on paper with fabricated chalks. Razzall explains how the colours have faded over time, but notes the delicacy of the images that sold across Europe. However, as they had more disposable income and set greater store by improving the mind through travel, the British took the Grand Tour more seriously than their continental cousins. Richard Brompton's `Edward, Duke of York (1739-67) with His Friends in Venice' (1764-67) captures the flavour of a typical party and Sweet describes how the different religious and secular feasts would have dictated their itinerary.

Whitaker reveals that the Pope had given the Doge permission to ceremonially marry the sea and this ritual always took place on Ascension Thursday. She marvels at the minute detailing and the use of light in `The Bacino di San Marco on Ascension Day', as she explains how Canaletto presented the stratification of Venetian society in the way the figures were arranged on the Doge's bucentaur barge. The camera closes in to examine some of the gondoliers and the light glinting on the water, and the artistry of this unique chronicler of Venetian life is readily apparent.

The War of the Austrian Succession disrupted the flow of visitors in the 1740s and Consul Smith helped Canaletto cope with the drop in demand for his work by commissioning a set of six Roman views and a further six focusing on Palladian architecture. Still needing to boost the coffers, however, Canaletto came to London in 1746 and lodged in Beak Street. Beddington suggests he was more bored than broke, as he had devoted a decade to painting variations on the same old views. He returned to capriccio with `The Portico with the Lantern' (c.1740), as well as producing such London vistas as `The Thames from Somerset House Terrace towards the City' and `The Thames from Somerset House Terrace towards Westminster' (both c.1750-51).

Although his success was limited in London, Canaletto had an impact on British landscape painting before he returned to Venice in 1755, the same year that Consul Smith published an inventory of his library in the hope of finding a rich buyer. The future George III was offered the book collection for £10,000, but the outbreak of the Seven Years' War disrupted negotiations. By the time discussions resumed in the spring of 1762, Smith had agreed to add some 5000 paintings to the 15,000 volumes and a fee of £20,000 was agreed and George ordered the pictures to be hung at the newly acquired Buckingham House.

As for Canaletto, he continued to paint and was accepted into the Venetian Academy in 1763. Razzall notes that he never married and remained something of a solitary figure until his death in 1768 and burial in the same church in San Lio in which he had been baptised. Beddington remarks that Canaletto may well have been exploited by Smith, as he died a rich man while the artist had few material possessions. Over views of `The Forum' and `Ruins of the Forum looking towards the Capitol' (both 1742), Pericolo states that Canaletto has been undervalued by art historians who have failed to recognise the way his work advanced the Venetian style and even anticipated the avant-garde. Whitaker is equally inspired by the combination of the topographical and the poetic in `A Regatta on the Grand Canal' (c.1733-34) and she concludes by praising his mastery of paint and the ability to combine the real and the imaginary in a manner that almost seems to create three-dimensional depth during a final montage of close-ups.

Accompanied by a rousing score by Asa Bennett, this is one of the more accessible films in the Exhibition on Screen series. Given the speed with which director David Bickerstaff and producer Phil Grabsky turn these projects around, the level of historical detail and informed opinion is quite remarkable. Rosie Razzall, Charles Beddington and Lucy Whitaker stand out on this occasion, with their enthusiasm and expertise doing much to counter any preconceptions that Canaletto is merely a polished draughtsman. A little more on his brushwork might have been useful, especially as Claire Chorley is so au fait with his technique, while Lorenzo Pericolo might have been afforded a bit more time to expound upon his theories on Canaletto as a patriotic painter.

Nevertheless, Bickerstaff and Hugh Hood's gallery camerawork is exemplary, as they convey the flavour of the Buckingham Palace exhibition and capture the intricacy of Canaletto's craft. They also make the most of the Venetian colour without making the cutaways feel like clips from a TV holiday programme. In particular, while shooting from spots that would have been familiar to Canaletto, they succeed in showing how little the canalscapes have changed over time.

Quite whether his contemporaries get their full due is another matter, but those unfamiliar with Sebastiano Ricci and Rosalba Carriera may well be inspired to dig deeper. As for Canaletto, he is palpably demonstrated to be vastly superior to what, in some quarters, is his chocolate box reputation. But one is left most intrigued by the nature of the Grand Tour and it's to be hoped that someone might option the rights to a book like Brian Dolan's Ladies of the Grand Tour (2001) or Jeremy Black's The British Abroad: The Grand Tour in the 18th Century (2003) to follow their lead on to the big or small screen.