At the beginning of his career Canaletto (1697–1768) painted views of Venice that were singled out by the most discerning connoisseurs, and at its peak in the 1730s and 1740s he was by far the most successful Italian painter of his day. His work has never gone out of fashion, and he is now among the most popular of all Old Master painters. Because so much of Canaletto's oeuvre provides effortless enjoyment to the viewer, he is sometimes regarded as concerned only with the visible world, as opposed to those artists who were inspired by their religion or their imagination. However, Canaletto brought as reflective and original an insight to his early work as any of his contemporaries, and throughout his career he took relief from his normal realism in flights of fantasy and caprice. Even in his apparently most realistic pictures of Venice, Padua, and London, artistic considerations always took precedence over fact. This book accompanies the first exhibition of the work of Canaletto ever held in the United States. It follows the course of his career as painter and draftsman and reviews the different phases of his technical and artistic development. Canaletto's achievement cannot be seen as a whole without assembling a number of paintings and drawings still owned by the descendants of those who acquired them in his lifetime. Supreme among such collections is that of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II who owns the works sold to George III by Canaletto's principal patron, Consul Joseph Smith; a large number of these paintings and drawings are illustrated. Among public collections, the National Gallery, London, agreed to the inclusion of Canaletto's greatest masterpiece: "The Stonemason's Yard." Essays outlining Canaletto's life and illuminating his work are by J. G. Links, authority and author on Canaletto, who revised W. G. Constable's catalogue raisonné for its second and now its third editions; Michael Levey, former Director of the National Gallery, London: Francis Haskell, Professor of the History of Art at the University of Oxford; Alessandro Bettagno, professor, and Director of the Institute for the History of Art at the Cini Foundation, Venice; and Viola Pemberton-Pigott, Senior Restorer to the Royal Collection. The paintings and drawings are discussed by Katharine Baetjer, Curator in the Department of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and J. G. Links.

Assistant Curator Allison Rudnick highlights the works from the Department of Drawings and Prints' remarkable collection that will be on rotating view in The Robert Wood Johnson, Jr. Gallery.

Curator Andrea Bayer surveys a selection of The Met's Venetian paintings ahead of a series of talks she will give in February, Celebrating La Serenissima.

This handsome volume presents selections from one of America's preeminent private collections of Old Master drawings, assembled over the last quarter century by David M. and Julie Tobey. Dating from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, seventy-two drawings—several previously unpublished—are featured. The diverse array of holdings consists principally of works by Italian masters but also by artists whose careers brought them south of the Alps, among them such brilliant draftsmen as Correggio, Giulio Romano, Parmigianino, Salvator Rosa, Poussin, Bernini, Canaletto, Tiepolo, and their contemporaries. Impressive in their variety, the drawings include figure and composition studies, landscapes, portraits, botanical drawings, motifs inspired by classical antiquity, and designs for painted compositions. Among the highlights are a splendid study of the head of Julius Caesar by Andrea del Sarto, a lively sheet of sketches by Perino del Vaga, a stunningly naturalistic study of a nude boy by Ludovico Carracci, a poetic Guercino landscape, charming topographical views by Luca Carlegarijs, Canaletto, and Bernardo Bellotto, a rare composition drawing by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, and a richly painted allegory by Giovanni David, to name just a few of the superlative examples in this carefully formed collection. The catalogue includes lengthy entries on each drawing and illuminating biographies of the artists. Every drawing in the Tobey Collection is reproduced in color and accompanied by numerous comparative illustrations. The contributors are Linda Wolk-Simon, Curator; George R. Goldner, Drue Heinz Chairman; Carmen C. Bambach and Perrin Stein, Curators; and Stijn Alsteens, Associate Curator, all of the Department of Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Mary Vaccaro, Professor of Art History at the University of Texas at Arlington.

In memory of Jayne Wrightsman, a curator shares a moving story about one of Mrs. Wrightman's many gifts to The Met: the elegant gold-and-white Neoclassical room from the Hôtel de Cabris.

This is the third in a series of catalogues published jointly by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Pierpont Morgan Library to record exhibitions of drawings from the two institutions and from distinguished private collections. The exhibitions and the books that illustrate them will ultimately document the finest traditions of European draughtsmanship, from the Renaissance through the nineteenth century. The Eighteenth Century in Italy, which follows The Italian Renaissance and The Seventeenth Century in Italy, contains reproductions of 300 drawings, presented one to a page. The book brings together, chronologically, brilliant works by G. B. Tiepolo, Canaletto, Francesco Guardi, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and Domenico Tiepolo—as well as drawings of fifty-one other masters of the Settecento. As in the preceding catalogues, the photographic reproductions have been made directly from the drawings themselves in order to retain, as much as possible, the original tonalities. Each of the 300 drawings has a commentary, record of provenance and exhibitions, technical description, and bibliography. And, for the first time in the series, many watermarks have been drawn and reproduced photographically.

Part of a collection formed over the past five decades by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, the 124 paintings, drawings, and pastels in this catalogue range in date from the early sixteenth to the late nineteenth century; some remain in Mrs. Wrightsman's personal collection, while others have been given to or purchased for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Among the most notable of these works are masterpieces by Lorenzo Lotto, Guercino, El Greco, Rubens, Georges de la Tour, Van Dyck, Vermeer, Jacques-Louis David, and Caspar David Friedrich, as well as numerous paintings by the eighteenth-century Venetian artists Canaletto, Guardi, and the Tiepolos, father and son, plus a dozen remarkable portrait drawings by Ingres, the largest holding of the artist's drawings currently in private hands. Well-known artists are joined by those who are brought to fresh awareness through the commentary that accompanies each work. About half of the pictures in the catalogue were acquired after the Wrightsman collection was first published in 1973. As a testament to the continuing passion and discernment of Mrs. Wrightsman, this volume celebrates the generosity of a great benefactor.

Lovers of European drawing will take delight in this beautifully illustrated volume of 120 drawings that cover some 500 years of art history and represent a diversity of artistic schools in Italy, Northern Europe, France, and Great Britain. They were selected from the notable collection of Jean Bonna of Geneva, Switzerland, and they highlight the rich quality and diversity of the Bonna Collection. The drawings are as varied in their range of subject matter as they are in medium and artistic style, and they encompass fine examples by both major masters and less well-known artists. Narrative scenes, religious subjects, studies of the human figure, formal and informal portraits, animal and nature studies, landscapes, cityscapes, and seascapes predominate in the collection. The catalogue begins with such Italian artists as Andrea del Sarto, Raphael, Palma Il Giovane, Ludovico and Annibale Carracci, Canaletto, Francesco Guardi, and Giandomenico Tiepolo. The Northern European artists include the Master of the Farm Landscapes, Jacob Jordaens, Rembrandt van Rijn, and Lambert Doomer. Eighteenth-century accomplishments in French art are exemplified in exceptional works by Claude Lorrain, Pierre Puget, Charles Le Brun, Jean-Antoine Watteau, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Pierre-Adrien Pâris, Jean-Siméon Chardin, and François Boucher. From the nineteenth century, there are emblematic works by such varied artists as Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, Théodore Gericault, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Odilon Redon, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, and Georges Seurat. Although many of the drawings in Jean Bonna's collection have previously been published and exhibited, the quality and scope of his holdings have not been explored so fully until this publication and the exhibition it accompanies. The works from the Bonna Collection are illustrated in color, and whenever possible, at their actual sizes. They are arranged chronologically by the artist's date of birth and are grouped according to the main artistic schools. This volume is introduced by an interview with Jean Bonna by George Goldner, Drue Heinz Chairman of the Department of Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Each drawing is then described in an entry, many of which have comparative illustrations that shed further light on individual works. The entries were written by the curators of the Department of Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; the curator of the Bonna Collection; and well-known specialists in their respective fields.