Thursday, July 28, 2022

Bernardo Bellotto (1722-1780) - Traveling Vedutista

Bernardo Bellotto
Upper Reaches of Grand Canal facing Santa Croce, Venice
ca. 1740-50
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Bernardo Bellotto
Upper Reaches of Grand Canal facing Santa Croce (detail)
ca. 1740-50
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Bernardo Bellotto
Entrance to Grand Canal, with Santa Maria della Salute, Venice
ca. 1740-50
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Bernardo Bellotto
Entrance to Grand Canal, with Santa Maria della Salute (detail)
ca. 1740-50
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Bernardo Bellotto
Piazza di San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome
1744
oil on canvas
private collection

Bernardo Bellotto
Piazza della Signoria, Florence
1742
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Bernardo Bellotto
Piazza San Martino, Lucca
before 1750
oil on canvas
York City Art Gallery

Bernardo Bellotto
Ruins of Devín Castle, Bratislava
ca. 1759-60
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Bernardo Bellotto
View of Prina from Sonnenstein Castle
ca. 1759-60
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Bernardo Bellotto
View of Prina with the Fortress of Sonnenstein
ca. 1755-65
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Bernardo Bellotto
View of Schloss Hof, Austria
ca. 1759-60
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Bernardo Bellotto
View of Schloss Hof, Austria
ca. 1759-60
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Bernardo Bellotto
Miodowa Street, Warsaw
1777
oil on canvas
Royal Castle, Warsaw

Bernardo Bellotto
Bridgettine Church and Arsenal, Warsaw
1780
oil on canvas
Royal Castle, Warsaw

Bernardo Bellotto
Lobkowitzplatz, Vienna
ca. 1759-60
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

"Born in Venice in 1722, Bellotto had a precocious talent.  He received his earliest training with his uncle, the celebrated view painter Canaletto, from about 1735 onwards, and was accepted into the Fraglia dei Pittori (Venetian painters' guild) at the age of just 16.  In the 1740s Bellotto traveled extensively around the Italian peninsula, producing views of various cities including Florence, Rome, Verona and Turin.  He was called to Dresden in 1747, and the subsequent year was appointed Court Painter to Augustus III, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony.  Following the escalation of the Seven Years' War around 1758, Bellotto worked at the courts of Vienna (ca. 1758/59-1761) and Munich (1761), before returning again to Dresden (1761-66).  He spent the last 13 years of his life in Warsaw, at the court of Augustus III's successor, Stanislaus II August Poniatowski."

"Bellotto tends towards a more silvery light than Canaletto, as well as a cooler palette and a greater sense of monumentality.  Even when one of his compositions derived from a painting by his uncle, Bellotto tended to increase it in both size and scale.  . . .  Today, Bellotto is best known for his views of northern European cities, characterised by panoramic compositions, strongly contrasted use of light and shadow, and meticulous attention to architectural detail.  Such was Bellotto's precision that his late views of Warsaw played a crucial role in that city's reconstruction after the Second World War."   

– from curator's notes at the National Gallery, London