Friday, February 4, 2011

The Bernardo Be lotto Paintings


Bernardo Be lotto was a Venetians urban landscape painter or vedutista, and printmaker in etching famous for his verdures of European cities .He was the pupil and nephew of Canaletto and sometimes used the latter's memorable name, signing himself as Bernardo Canaletto. Especially in Germany, paintings attributed to Canaletto may actually be by Be lotto rather than by his uncle; in Poland, they are by Be lotto, who is known there as "Canaletto".

Bellbottom’s style was characterized by detailed representation of architectural and natural vistas, and by the specific quality of each place's lighting. It is believable that be lotto, and other Venetian masters of verdure, may have used the camera obscure in order to achieve superior precision of urban views.

When King August III of Poland, also an Elector of Saxony, who usually lived in Dresden, died in 1763, be lotto’s work became less important in Dresden. As a consequence, he left Dresden to seek employment in St Petersburg at the court of Catherine II of Russia. On his way to St. Petersburg, however, be lotto accepted an invitation in 1764 from Poland's newly nominated King Stanislaw August Poniatowski to become his court painter in Warsaw.

Here he remained some 16 years, for the rest of his life, as court painter to the King, for whom he painted several views of the Polish capital and its environs for the Royal Castle in Warsaw, complement of the great historical paintings commissioned by Poniatowski from Marcello Bacciarelli. His paintings of Warsaw, later relocated to Moscow and Leningrad, were restored to the Polish Communist Government and were used in rebuilding the city after its near-complete destruction by German troops during World War II.

There are paintings by Be lotto also at the Czartoryski Museum, in Krakow, Poland (a museum founded by Isabella Czartoryski, (1743 - 1835), with paintings and works of art from her estate, Pulawy), and in Wilanów Palace, in the outskirts of Warsaw, founded around 1805 by Stanislaw Kostka Potocki, where a portrait of the above mentioned Isabella Czartoryska can be seen.

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