Capriccio with a Pointed Arch

This 1735 Royal Collection capriccio with a pointed arch demonstrates Canaletto's facility with the Gothic vocabulary of Venetian architecture — the pointed arches, quatrefoil windows, and lace-like stonework that gave the city its distinctive medieval-exotic character — used here as a compositional element in an invented setting rather than a documentary record. Gothic architecture carried quite different aesthetic meanings in eighteenth-century England and Italy: in Venice it was the native heritage of the Republic's medieval buildings, while in England it was beginning its Romantic revival through Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill and later the Gothic Revival. Canaletto's English patrons, who were simultaneously acquiring his Venetian vedute and building in the neo-Palladian tradition of Burlington and Kent, may have been drawn to this capriccio precisely because of the pointed arch's suggestion of the picturesque and the ancient. The Royal Collection's capriccio series, assembled through Consul Smith, provides one of the most comprehensive overviews of Canaletto's imaginative range alongside the factual views, documenting the full spectrum from meticulous topography to pure architectural fantasy.

The pointed Gothic arch provides a dramatic framing device, through which a classical landscape is visible. The contrast between Gothic and classical elements creates visual tension and architectural interest.