Capriccio of a Round Church with an Elaborate Gothic Portico in a Piazza, a Palladian Piazza and a Gothic Church Beyond 1755

Curator: Look at this beauty! We’re observing Canaletto’s "Capriccio of a Round Church with an Elaborate Gothic Portico in a Piazza, a Palladian Piazza and a Gothic Church Beyond," dating back to 1755. Oil on canvas, housed here at Arundel Castle. What's your take as you first set your eyes upon this elaborate scene? Editor: My first impression? Utter fantasy. The scene just screams impossible architecture. It feels theatrical, like a stage set design. It also feels intensely sunny, almost too perfectly bright. What are these "capriccios" Canaletto loved? Curator: Ah, you’ve hit upon something central. "Capriccio" is from the Italian for "caprice"— a deliberate flouting of architectural and topographical reality. They reflect the enduring symbolic power of classical and Gothic structures, re-imagined. Canaletto mixed and matched architectural elements based on historical and aesthetic associations. So, this is architectural storytelling, not documentary. Editor: So it's less about what Venice *was*, and more about the stories Venice could tell. The light, the figures...they contribute to that invented narrative too. Everyone looks so posed! It emphasizes the "scene" like an opera frozen mid-aria. Curator: Indeed. The figures populating the piazza—what do they trigger for you? Their groupings, costumes...? Editor: Well, they are frozen in time, with so many of them grouped tightly with each other as they sit or talk, and I feel a certain kind of calm here. They are mere elements, accessories amplifying the scale of these imagined grand spaces. Canaletto reduces the people to emphasize the glorious potential of what urban space can become, but ultimately it's also a feeling of isolation, don’t you think? This perfect space is inhabited with perfect people. Curator: The perspective really accentuates that feeling. The distant vanishing point almost swallows the figures whole. They exist more as staffage—decorative elements—than protagonists. Still, this fabricated composition allows Canaletto to blend these different architectural periods in a pleasing harmonious way that, despite being fabricated, really transcends their actual individual form to represent idealized civic life. Editor: Well, I'm sold. The architecture whispers of unrealized ambitions and perfectly picturesque social possibility all in the sunlight, but still with all the shadows lurking just around every impossibly perfect corner.