View of the Arch of Constantine with the Colosseum

Canaletto made his name with views of Venice sold to the young aristocrats of the Grand Tour, and for a short period in the 1740s he turned the same eye on the monuments of ancient Rome, working up scenes from drawings made on an earlier visit and from engravings by other hands. This is the Roman counterpart of the Venetian vedute: the Arch of Constantine frames the Colosseum beyond it, and Canaletto duly shifted the amphitheatre where the composition wanted it — an adjustment that says as much about his working method as any argument over topographic accuracy. Around the ruins he sets the daily traffic of the city, travellers and their laden servants on one side and poorer Romans resting in the shadow of the arch on the other, and the Getty’s own reading of the picture finds in that contrast a quiet remark on the distance between Rome’s ancient glory and its present poverty. The painting is held in the J. Paul Getty Museum.