Venice: Camera Obscura

To achieve precision, veduta painters often used optical devices like the camera obscura, which projected a view through a lens onto a flat surface, making it ideal for tracing. Such instruments gained prominence in the 1700s alongside increased scientific interest in optics, advanced by writers (including the English physicist Isaac Newton) who likened the human eye to a camera. Canaletto may have owned the box camera bearing his name shown here, though he likely worked mainly with booth- or tent-type models, such as those reproduced in Denis Diderot’s contemporary Encyclopédie. Despite using such tools however, Canaletto always combined the mechanical with his own observational skill and artistic invention—shifting buildings, adjusting proportions, and combining viewpoints to suit his needs and effectively stage his scenes.