Bernardo Canal, born in Venice in 1674, was initially a famed set designer: he is mentioned in eighteenth-century sources as a “theatre painter”. 

Around 1719, after a trip to Rome with his son to create scenes for an opera by Alessandro Scarlatti, he decided to devote himself exclusively to painting, influenced by the famous Roman views of Flemish Gaspar van Wittel, considered the inventor of landscape painting as an autonomous pictorial genre. 

He began to produce paintings with Venetian subjects, depicting views of his hometown, animated with figures, with meticulous care and attention to architectural details and architectural perspective and illusions, a legacy from his previous profession as a set designer.