Giovanni Antonio Canal, aka Canaletto, was born in Venice and is best known for his landscapes depicting his home town.

It was in the studio of his father, a painter of theatre sets, that he began learning his painting technique. He soon turned to landscape painting and became one of the masters of the veduta. His style combines mastery of perspective and a clever play of shadow and light. He tackled his views with a concern for realistic detail that magnifies his urban landscapes. He quickly acquired a European reputation and found clients and patrons in England, where he stayed for nearly ten years from 1746. He died in 1768 in the city he had painted from every viewpoint.

Canaletto influenced many Italian artists (Bernardo Bellotto, Michele Marieschi, Giambattista Tiepolo, Francesco Guardi) and European landscape painters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.