The View Painters of Europe

318 pp. With 255 plates, including 57 in color. The eighteenth century was the age of the Grand Tour in Europe. The view painters, the best-known of whom were the Venetians Canaletto, Guardi and Bellotto, produced a wide range, from grand panoramas to lively genre scenes. These topographical paintings provide a unique and colourful record of everyday life, festivities and customs in the eighteenth century, and of buildings, streets and townscapes long-since vanished. The illustrations, a large number of them in colour, are chosen from pictures in museums and private collections in many countries. They are accompanied and enhanced by a choice of descriptive narratives from the diaries and letters of travellers such as Goethe, Tobias Smollett, Charles Burney, the distinguished Count Francesco Algarotti and the Baron de Pollnitz.