Twelve ducal festivities, including the Doge’s Coronation; the Ascension Day “Marriage of the Sea”, the Feast of La Salute; the Celebrations of Giovedì Grasso [The Last Thursday of Carnival]; the great Corpus Christi procession; the reception of foreign ambassadors. In each, Venice appears solemn and magnificent, still able to project a remarkable image of itself and its public institutions, maintaining a fine balance between civil dignity and religious devotion. With a sharp eye for detail, Canaletto (1697-1768) offered a new view of such ducal festivities, describing every single feature of them: the buildings, the furnishings, the boats, the costumes and the scenographical settings. And later, Giambattista Brustolon (1712-17896) would produce remarkably skilled and faithful engraving of his paintings. Commissioned by the print merchant Ludovico Furlanetto in 1766, these twelve plates produced a series of etchings whose success would continue unabated for two centuries. The inscriptions on the plates were modified a total of four times, with each change in ownership (hence the distinction between first, second, third and fourth state prints). Then two of the plates would be lost during the first half of the nineteenth century. However, the ten survivors became part of the Museo Correr collection in 1955. The exhibition offers the first opportunity to all of them together, along with examples of the different states of the prints. All 12 scenes are present, even those that were depicted on the two lost plates, because the Museo Correr collection includes copies of all the prints from various sources. The show is completed with the camera obscura said to have belonged to Canaletto himself, and also with material that charts the history and fortunes of this remarkable publishing venture. Overall, there are more than thirty works that give a vivid idea of the magnificence of the Venetian Republic and the vitality of its entrepreneurial class, as well as conveying something of the mystery of old technical skills and crafts. Furthermore, thanks to the Venice City Council Information Services Department, computerised images make it possible to explore every single detail of these masterly engravings.