Canaletto - The City as Stage

A 2022 Arte Documentary Film. Audio in German with English subtitles.

The Venetian painter Canaletto is the undisputed master of veduta painting. His views of European cities became famous as early as the 18th century. On the occasion of his 300th birthday, the film embarks on a journey in the footsteps of the artist. It leads to Venice, Dresden and Warsaw as well as into the artist's illusionistic bag of tricks. Canaletto's vedutas are supposedly photographically accurate depictions of residences, streets and squares. The artist acts as director, lighting technician and stage builder all in one and stages lively panoramas as if the city were a big stage. In doing so, Canaletto uses many perspectival tricks that he learned from his uncle, an accomplished veduta and stage painter, in the world capital of opera: Venice.

Filled with characters and stories, Canaletto's large-scale cityscapes paint a fascinating picture of old, historical Europe that is burned deep into our collective consciousness. To this day, the artist's works fill us with a longing for the ideal city. But are Canaletto's vedutas of Venice, Dresden and Warsaw accurate representations of the European city, or are they fiction themselves? The documentation explores the biographical and artistic life of the painter and travels in his footsteps from Venice via Florence to Dresden and finally to Warsaw, whose old town, which was destroyed in World War II, was rebuilt based on paintings by Canaletto.