Giovanni Antonio Canale, later known as Canaletto (probably to distinguish him from his father Bernardo Canale, also an artist), was an unrivalled architectural painter with an excellent sense of composition and a great eye for detail. He was a prolific painter and was much imitated in his lifetime by both English and Venetian painters. Born in Venice October 1697, he lived and worked most of his life there, apart from a year's study in Rome (1719-20), and a ten-year sojourn in England (1746-1756). Canaletto received professional training from his father, who worked as a successful theatrical designer and scene painter.

In 1719, he travelled with his father to Rome where he came into contact with Dutch and Italian painters who specialised in vedute (view paintings) of classical ruins, and studied under Panini. It was fashionable for young gentlemen of the time to take the Grand European tour, and vedute paintings were very popular souvenirs. Within the Italian tradition of vedute Canaletto explored different forms. He created vedute esatte (precise views), and also vedute ideale (imaginary or fantastic views), which are known as capricci. In these works Canaletto drew together architectural subjects from different sources and arranged them in an imaginative setting to create a consciously fictional and poetic image. Pictures of this type assume knowledge of their subjects on the part of the viewer, and were designed to appeal to the contemporary taste for ruins and the nostalgia they evoked.

In the 1730's Canaletto was so popular, he hired a group of assistants in his studio to try and cope with the demand. In 1746, the Austrian War of Succession caused a huge drop in English tourists, and Canaletto went to England to chase commissions and paint scenes with an appeal to the English market. He was very successful during this period, receiving many commissions to paint stately homes and government buildings. The most important person in Canaletto’s career and most instrumental in marketing his work to the tourist trade, was his patron Joseph Smith (c.1674-1770), an Englishman who lived in Venice, and who worked as an agent on behalf of British collectors of manuscripts, books and works of art. Smith also served as British Consul to the Venice Republic (1744-1760; 1766) and had a notable Canaletto collection of his own. He sold his collection, at the time the largest collection of Canaletto's works ever assembled, in 1762-3 to King George III. Most of those paintings are still in the Royal Collection today.

Canaletto's technique had the traditional Venetian hallmarks of luminous light and glowing colour, influenced by Dutch attention to accuracy and detail. From 1756 Canaletto gave up painting small Venetian views and turned to grandeur and fantasy, broadening his subject matter to include views of Rome.