_Canaletto_ (Venetian: 1697-1768). _See 127._
One of the principal waterways, after the Grand Canal, in Venice. The
picture is a good instance of this painter's method of representing
water. He "covers the whole space of it with one monotonous ripple,
composed of a coat of well-chosen, but perfectly opaque and smooth
sea-green, covered with a certain number--I cannot state the exact
average, but it varies from three hundred and fifty to four hundred
and upwards, according to the extent of canvas to be covered, of white
concave touches, which are very properly symbolical of ripple[207]....
If it be but remembered that every one of the surfaces of those
multitudinous ripples is in nature a mirror which catches, according
to its position, either the image of the sky, or of the silver beaks
of the gondolas, or of their black bodies and scarlet draperies, or of
the white marble, or the green sea-weed on the low stones, it cannot
but be felt that those waves would have something more of colour upon
them than that opaque dead green.... Venice is sad and silent now to
what she was in his time; but even yet, could I but place the reader
at early morning on the quay below the Rialto, when the market-boats,
full-laden, float into groups of golden colour, and let him watch the
dashing of the water about their glittering steely heads, and under
the shadows of the vine leaves; and show him the purple of the grapes
and the figs, and the glowing of the scarlet gourds, carried away in
long streams upon the waves; and among them, the crimson fish-baskets,
plashing and sparkling and flaming as the morning sun falls on their
wet tawny sides; and above, the painted sails of the fishing-boats,
orange and white, scarlet and blue,--he would not be merciful to
Canaletto any more" (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. v. ch. i.
§§ 18, 19).