Bernardo Bellotto

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"Bellotto's urban scenes have the same carefully drawn realism as his uncle's Venetian views but are marked by heavy shadows and are darker and colder in tone and colour." (2004 Encyclopaedia Britannica)

Bernardo Bellotto (January 30, 1720 — October 17, 1780) was an Italian urban landscape painter or vedutista, and printmaker in etching. He was the pupil and nephew of Canaletto, and sometimes also used the latter's illustrious name, thus signing as Bernardo Canaletto – illegally according to some. Especially in Germany, paintings described as by Canaletto may be his rather than his uncle's.

His style was characterized by elaborate representation of architectural or natural vistas, as well as the specific quality of each place's lighting. Like his uncle and many other Venetian masters of vedute, he used the camera obscura in order to achieve the superior precision of his urban views.

[edit] Biography

Bellotto was born in Venice, the son of Lorenzo Antonio Bellotto e Fiorenza Canal, sister of the then famous Canaletto, and studied in his uncle's workshop.

In 1742 he moved to Rome where he produced vedute of that city. In 1744 and 1745 he travelled northern Italy, again depicting vedutes of each city. Among others, he worked for Charles Emmanuel III of Savoy.

From 1747 to 1758 he moved to Dresden, following an invitation of King August III of Poland. He created various paintings of the cities Dresden and Pirna and their surroundings. Today, these paintings preserve a memory of Dresden's former beauty, which was destroyed in the bombing during World War II.

His international reputation grew, and in 1758 he followed an invitation by the Empress Maria Theresa to Vienna, where he painted views of the city's monuments. Thereafter he worked in Munich and then Dresden, again. While working in St Petersburg, he accepted the invitation of Stanislaw Poniatowski to become his court painter. His paintings of Warsaw were used for rebuilding the city after its near complete destruction in World War II.

He died in Warsaw in 1780.