|
Bernardo Bellotto aka Canaletto Belotto
(Jan.30,1720, Venice - Oct.17,1780, Warsaw) Italian Oil Painting Artist Biography
Bernardo Bellotto at about the age of fourteen entered the service of his uncle Giovanni Antonio Canaletto as a student. In 1742 Bernardo left to spend some time in Rome, just as his uncle Antonio had done at the same age and apparently with the same goal, to study architectural and topographical painting at the place where the best artists had lived. A year later he returned to Venice.
Bernardo Bellotto worked closely with his uncle during his last years in Venice. In a number of paintings of about 1740 from Canaletto's workshop, Bellotto's hand can be recognized with a reasonable degree of certainty in stylistic idiosyncrasies which were to become increasingly characteristic of his work. Almost doubtlessly, other canvases were painted by Canaletto after composition drawings by Bellotto. As an independent artist, however, Bellotto comes most clearly to the forefront with oil paintings such as the View of Gazzada near Varese. Even aside from the motifs, which are completely different from those of his uncle, it is especially the use of color that one notices, the saturated greens and browns and a good deal of shadow, against skies which can be of a very cool blue.
Bellotto left Italy for good in 1747, to spend the rest of his life working at various European courts. He called himself Canaletto Belotto or Canaletto The Younger when painting outside Italy and this caused confusion (perhaps deliberate) between his work and his uncle Giovanni Antonio Canaletto, particularly in views of Venice.
He worked in Dresden for eleven years as court painter to the elector-king August III of Saxony and Poland. He was commissioned by August III to paint three series of large-sized oil canvases, twenty-nine in all, with scenes of the city of Dresden. These oil canvases, most of them almost two and a half meters wide, were to be hung in the royal painting gallery in the Stallhof. It was in Dresden that Bellotto's style finally was fully developed. It is characterized by the greatest possible topographical precision, complete control of light, mathematical perspective and a consequent pursuit of clarity and organization. Not surprisingly, Bellotto's artwork shows no trace of the virtuosity with which his uncle would dash figures and other details onto the canvas. His brushwork is unhurried and descriptive, almost severe and in his use of colors he constantly seems to be seeking to reproduce precisely the hues he observed in the open air. Yet the most remarkable feature of Bellotto's work is his handling of light.
In 1758 Bernardo Bellotto fled from the violence of the Seven Years War to Vienna, toward the end of the war Bellotto returned to Dresden. But there was no longer any place for court painters in the capital of Saxony. As soon as he could, Bellotto left Dresden, finding himself in Warsaw, where he settled and continued to work from 1767 until his death in 1780. Here he was at the court of an enlightened prince once more, this time King Stanislaus Poniatowski. Virtually his entire series of Warsaw oil paintings decorate the Canaletto Hall in Warsaw's Royal Palace.
In marked contrast to Canaletto, who worked largely for the tourist market, virtually all Bernardo Bellotto's paintings were intended for royal residences and galleries. It is very likely that for this reason, whereas Canaletto's oil paintings attracted a hoard of imitators and followers, Bellotto remained a relatively isolated figure in the history of art, whose work was only slowly discovered, recognized and distinguished from that of the other Canaletto in the course of the 20th century. In the rebuilding of Warsaw after the Second World War his oil paintings were used as guides, even in the reconstruction of architectural ornament.
|
|
|
|
|
View of Gazzada near Varese
|
Dresden from the Elbe
|
View all the bellotto oil painting art reproductions.
Giovanni Bellini
Albert Bierstadt
Every oil painting reproduction is a 100% hand painted on canvas oil painting done in the traditional manner.
Bernardo Bellotto, Canaletto Belotto, Italian, art museum oil painting reproductions, art reproduction oil painting, famous art artwork copy oil paintings reproduction, famous artist painters reproduction oil paintings, art reproductions oil paintings, famous old masters oil painting reproduction, famous artists painters copy oil painting copies, wholesale art reproduction oil paintings, wholesale oil painting art reproductions, Canaletto Bernardo Bellotto biography, Venetian oil paintings, architectural oil paintings.
|
