courtesy Ministero per i Beni e le Attività
Culturali
Conegliano: Palazzo Sarcinelli – Bernardo Bellotto. Il Canaletto
delle Corte Europee exhibition. In the charming town of Conegliano Veneto in
the Prosecco hills northwest of Venice, until April 15 2012 at
Palazzo Sarcinelli, the exhibition Bernardo Bellotto. Il Canaletto delle CorteEuropee (Bernardo Bellotto, the Canaletto of European Courts). Bernardo Bellotto, 1722-1780, was a Venetian
urban landscape painter or vedutista and printmaker in etching, famous for his vedutes
of European cities (Dresden, Vienna, Venice, Turin and Warsaw).
Nephew and pupil of Antonio Canal, better known as Canaletto. The exhibition takes us on a Grand Tour of
Europe told through seventy paintings and etchings following Bellotto’s
creative evolution.
Above: Venice - Bernardo Bellotto, Rio dei Mendicanti e la Scuola di San Marco,
1741 oil on canvas.
courtesy
Palazzo Sarcinelli
Palazzo
Sarcinelli – Bernardo Bellotto. Il Canaletto delle Corte Europee
exhibition - Venice. Canaletto’s La
Piazzetta verso la
Basilica della Salute, 1723, oil on canvas. Bellotto was the pupil and nephew of
Canaletto, and sometimes he used the latter's illustrious name, thus signing
himself as Bernardo Canaletto. In
Germany, paintings described as by Canaletto may be his rather than his uncle's
in Poland, they are by
Bellotto, who is known there as "Canaletto".
photo
Andrzej Ring and Bartosz Tropilo
Palazzo
Sarcinelli – Bernardo Bellotto. Il Canaletto delle Corte Europee
exhibition – Warsaw. Bernardo
Bellotto’s Il Palazzo di Wilanow Visto dal Parco, 1776 oil on canvas.
Late in 1766, called to be
the court painter by the recently crowned king, Stanislaus II Augustus
Poniatowski Bernardo Bellotto, went to Warsaw. His views of Warsaw are nearly
all collected in the city’s Royal Castle.
photograph and copyright manfredi bellati
Palazzo
Sarcinelli – Bernardo Bellotto. Il Canaletto delle Corte Europee
exhibition – Vienna. Bernardo Bellotto’s
Il “Palazzo in Villa” Liechtenstein Visto da Est, 1759- 1760. The curator of the exhibition, Dario Succi takes a
guided tour round the exhibition. In 1758, the Empress
Maria-Teresa summoned Bellotto to Vienna, where he painted views of the capital’s
Gothic and Baroque monuments.
photograph and copyright manfredi bellati
Palazzo
Sarcinelli – Bernardo Bellotto. Il Canaletto delle Corte Europee
exhibition – Warsaw. A print by Bernardo Bellotto, Il Fossato dello Zwinger,
1758. In Warsaw Bellotto remained for sixteen years, until the end of his life, as
court painter to the King, for whom he painted numerous views of the Polish
capital and its environs for the Royal Castle in Warsaw, complementing the great historical paintings commissioned
by king Stanislaus from Marcello Bacciarelli.
photograph and copyright manfredi bellati
Palazzo
Sarcinelli – Bernardo Bellotto. Il Canaletto delle Corte Europee
exhibition – Pirna, Germany. A detail of
Bernardo Bellotto’s Il Sobborgo dei Barcaroli a Pirna, 1753-1754 oil on canvas.
Bellotto's style was characterized by elaborate representation of
architectural and natural vistas, and by the specific quality of each place's
lighting. It is plausible that Bellotto, and other Venetian masters of vedute, may have used
the camera oscura in order to achieve superior precision of urban views.
Palazzo
Sarcinelli – Bernardo Bellotto. Il Canaletto delle Corte Europee
exhibition – Pirna, Germany. Bellotto’s
Pirna con L’Obertor, 1755-1756, oil on canvas.
photo
Andrzej Ring and Bartosz Tropilo
Palazzo
Sarcinelli – Bernardo Bellotto. Il Canaletto delle Corte Europee
exhibition – Warsaw. Bernardo Bellotto, La Chiesa di Santa Croce, 1778 oil on canvas.
photograph and copyright by manfredi bellati
Palazzo
Sarcinelli – Bernardo Bellotto. Il Canaletto delle Corte Europee
exhibition – Warsaw. The curator of the
Bernardo Bellotto exhibition Dario Succi explains that Bellotto’s paintings, thanks to
the fact that their poetic quality was combined with faultless accuracy, were
used as a draft for rebuilding Warsaw after its near-total destruction in the
Second World War.
Palazzo
Sarcinelli – Bernardo Bellotto. Il Canaletto delle Corte Europee
exhibition – Venetian Lagoon. Bernardo
Bellotto’s Capricio con Ruderi di un Tempio Romano sulla Riva della Laguna,
1743-1744 oil on canvas. In the late 1730s, still under Canaletto’s guidance,
the young Bellotto traveled extensively in Italy. He went to Rome, Florence,
Turin, Milan and Verona. In each city he left memorable images, giving a
precocious demonstration of his ability to capture not only the architectural
or natural features, but also the specific quality of the light in each place
he visited.