Bernardo Bellotto’s Landscapes against the Background of European Landscape Painting of the 17th–18th Centuries

Artur Badach (Museum of Warsaw Castle, Poland)

Bernardo Bellotto (1722–1780) is recognized as one of the most important European veduta painters of the 18th century. The artist’s style matured as Bellotto began making solo trips to Florence, Rome, Lombardy, and Turin. Already in this period landscapes appeared in his oeuvre, both painted and drawn. They prove the young painter’s ability to observe the elements of nature and the great sensitivity with which he recreates landscapes in his paintings. This exhibition will be dedicated to Bellotto’s landscape work, which so far has not been the subject of separate, in-depth studies. Another important goal will be to define the artistic context in which Bellotto’s landscape art was shaped. The perspective from which the artist observes the landscape and his realism, much greater than, for example, in the works of Antonio Canal, typical of Bellotto’s early period, are evidence of his knowledge of 18th-century Dutch landscape paintings. Later sources of inspiration may have been the works of, for example, Jan van Goyen, Jacop von Ruysdael or Phillips de Koninck from the Wettin collection in Dresden. At the same time, as two of his representations of Gazzada show, the style of Bellotto’s landscapes testifies to his influence on Venetian landscape painters, such as Francesco Zuccarelli, Giuseppe Zais, and Marco Ricci. A separate issue to be addressed in the planned exhibition is the presence of Arcadian motifs that feature in some of Bellotto’s compositions and that had been eagerly used by European painters since the mid-17th century.