Giovanni Antonio Canal was born in Venice as the son of the painter Bernardo Canal, hence his mononym Canaletto ("little Canal"), and Artemisia Barbieri.
Bernardo Bellotto is his nephew and pupil.
Canaletto had served his apprenticeship with his father and his brother and began in his father's occupation, that of a theatrical scene painter.
Inspired by the Roman vedutista Giovanni Paolo Pannini, Canaletto had started painting the daily life of the city and its people.
After returning from Rome in 1719, he had begun painting in his topographical style.
His first known signed and dated work is Architectural Capriccio (1723, Milan, in a private collection).
Studying with the older Luca Carlevarijs, a moderately talented painter of urban cityscapes, he had rapidly become his master's equal.
The painter Alessandro Marchesini, who was also the buyer for the Lucchese art collector Stefano Conti, had inquired in 1725 about buying two more 'views of Venice', when the agent informed him to consider instead the work of "Antonio Canale... it is like Carlevaris, but you can see the sun shining in it." (J.G. Links, Canaletto and his patrons, Granada Publishing/Paul Elek Ltd., London 1977. p. 1.)
Much of Canaletto's early artwork is painted "from nature", differing from the customary practice of completing paintings in the studio.
Some of his later works do revert to this custom, as suggested by the tendency for distant figures to be painted as blobs of color—an effect produced by using a camera obscura, which blurs farther-away objects.
However, his paintings are always notable for their accuracy: he records the seasonal submerging of Venice in water and ice.
Canaletto's early works remain his most coveted and, according to many authorities, his best.
One of his early pieces is The Stonemason's Yard which depicts a humble working area of the city.
The Stonemason's Yard (formally known as Campo S. Vidal and Santa Maria della Carità), unsigned and undated, is attributed and dated by stylistic clues.
The informal scene is thought to have been painted for a Venetian patron, rather than a foreign visitor to Venice, in the mid to late 1720s.
it is considered one of Canalettto's finest works.
