ABSTRACT
This chapter treats some aspects of the relation between art history as a scholarly discipline and two markets: Old Master paintings and exhibitions. The art market is one of the fields that offer working possibilities for profession, possibilities too long neglected by academic formation. In 1996 the 300th anniversary of the birth of leading exponent of eighteenth-century Venetian figure painting, Giambattista Tiepolo, was solemnly celebrated with various exhibitions, the most important being the retrospective shown first at Ca' Rezzonico in Venice and then at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. 'Canaletti' appears to have become much more than the name of an artist and his family and school, but rather the generic term to describe painters of Venetian townscape paintings. Since the year 1999/2000 the number of exhibitions, mostly claiming to be monographic, increased, and more than thirty exhibitions dedicated to one of the painters active in the field of the Venetian veduta in the eighteenth century were organized.
