Cityscape
A branch of landscape whose principal subject is the city: its streets, squares, buildings and general views.
A cityscape is a painting or graphic work that depicts a city, and the corresponding branch of the landscape genre. The Getty thesaurus defines such works by their subject: views of settlements that may be considered cities, that is, large and internally complex communities; a separate term, townscapes, is provided for views of towns.
The cityscape should not be equated with the veduta. The veduta (Italian for “view”) is its historical variety: a detailed, largely factual topographical view, above all the eighteenth-century Italian paintings, drawings and prints of cities. Early vedute were made by northern European artists working in Italy in the sixteenth century. The best-known masters are Canaletto in Venice and Giovanni Paolo Panini in Rome. Distinct from the veduta proper are the veduta ideata, a realistically conceived view with imaginary elements, and the capriccio, in which real or fanciful buildings are grouped in an arbitrary, imaginary arrangement.
Every veduta is therefore an urban (or architectural) view, but not every cityscape is a veduta: cities are also painted with no claim to topographical accuracy, in any manner and in any period.
