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Giovanni Antonio Canal known as Canaletto<break strength="x-strong"/> The Malghera Tower, 1742-1745<break strength="x-strong"/> Etching on copper 294x424 mm Donation of Guglielmo Guidi (Febru<break strength="x-strong"/>ary 2002)<break strength="x-strong"/> The Malghera Tower belongs to the series of engravings, made by Canaletto between 1740 and 1745, entitled Views. Other views taken from places and others conceived by Antonio Canal, dedicated to the English collector Joseph Smith, British consul in Venice. They are thirty-three views taken from life - which depict places in the city of Venice, the Brenta lagoon, Padua - and fantastic views, considered by critics "not only the greatest masterpiece of eighteenth-century engraving in Europe, but perhaps the masterpiece of all of Canaletto's work". When Canaletto began working on the series of engravings of the Views he was a more than mature artist. His painting reached the highest peaks and his Venetian paintings were so sought after by English collectors that in order to have them they offered “three times more than he himself asked for”. The Malghera tower reproduces a defense tower built in 1209 on the island of San Giuliano, then demolished in the nineteenth century. It is an eloquent example of the great technical qualities possessed by the Venetian artist, which translate into a scenographic composition characterized by an infinite range of blacks, variously shaded grays and dazzling luminosities and pictorial transparencies that are absolutely peculiar. Canaletto arranges, in the foreground, in a landscape still free from the mass of metals and chimneys of the industrial Marghera, some boats of poor fishermen headed for Venice, while others are moored next to the small pier, near the tower. The water of the lagoon is no longer described with equal parallel strokes, as in the first engravings of the Views, but with small and lively signs that make it wavy, "rippled and shimmering with reflections". From the left, the prow of a gondola enters the scene, whose classic comb has always been the emblem of the Serenissima.