Andrea Gottdang

For an exhibition catalogue, this is extreme overkill. Usually there's an introductory essay, maybe a time-line style mini-biography, possibly a CV (contemporary artists) and the images themselves, accompanied by no more than basic information such as, title, media used, date and size.

This monster has a time-line, a dozen essays on relevant topics, a bibliography of the literature on each painting and each image is accompanied by anything from a couple of paragraphs to several pages of text, often with additional figures of related paintings or details of the main image. Clearly the authors and editors had ambitions way beyond that of your average simple exhibition catalogue - which would have been impressive enough, because these paintings are amazing. Did they succeed?

Yes. There is a gigantic quantity of detailed scholarship behind this book and it presents a remarkable amount of knowledge about Caneletto and his work from many different perspectives (pun intended). How did Canaletto learn his trade? How did his work develop from (still excellent) imitations of his uncle? How did he use perspective? What was his working method? (Highly technical, involving optical and draughtsman's tools.) How much can we rely on the paintings as architectural records? (Handle with care - Canaletto would alter proportions, locations, perspectives, orientations and details to suit his artistic purposes.) How was one of the paintings restored and what does it tell about working methods? - and more.

My only quibble is with the organisation of the book. Why doesn't the time-line bio come first? Why aren't all the essays at the beginning, followed by the catalogue, instead of the catalogue being sandwiched between two groups of essays?

This was an impulse purchase from the Gemaldegalerie in Berlin - it was half-price to clear and I could not resist. The hardships of lugging it around town and internationally back home and the paltry 10 Euros it cost were repaid enormously.… (altro)