HKB
is very good. He was, by the way, the first to apply the camera obscura to linear perspective, and he painted in a workmanlike manner, so that his pictures endure.[96]
An interesting piece of "old Venice." Beyond the canal is what is now the National Gallery of Venice--the Academy of Arts--but was in Canaletto's time still the Scuola della Carità, the conventual buildings of the Brotherhood of our Lady of Charity. Notice the green grass in the little square: the Campo, as it is called (the field), is now covered with flagstones (there is a sketch of this spot among the Turner drawings given by Ruskin to the University Galleries at Oxford: see Guide to the Venetian Academy, p. 34).
Cornelius Gerritz Decker (Dutch: died 1678).
"Amongst the artists who followed the footsteps of Ruysdael and Hobbema, the one who most nearly resembled these masters was Cornelius Decker, whose works may be classed among the best Dutch landscapes" (Havard's Dutch School, p. 209). He painted at Haarlem, and studied under Salomon Ruysdael (see 1344).
Canaletto (Venetian: 1697-1768). See 127.
The artist, "disgusted with his first profession (of scene painter), removed," we are told, "while still young to Rome, where he wholly devoted himself to drawing views from nature, and in particular from ancient ruins" (Lanzi, ii. 317).
Jan van Goyen (Dutch: 1596-1656).