The Stones of Venice: When the Grand Tour Discovered Venice

• Venice

In the 18th-century, the Italian landscapes were studios works where famous paintings were based to create their drawings and oil sketches.

This trend of painting landscapes that were not structured, classical, balanced and theoretical, originated with the vedette or "view" paintings that were a type of naturalistic landscape and cityscape painting made popular in the 18th century.

Canaletto, Guardi and others created commissioned images for the well-to-do travellers of the day, to remind themselves, and perhaps more importantly, others, of the adventures they were able to take.

This was one of the reasons that  Venice become a regular stop for the cultural tours of the 19th Century, when writers, poets and artists needed to visit the cities where art was growing.