Lot Essay
The present painting, always published as by Canaletto, is a newly recognised work of Bellotto's early maturity datable to circa 1742, and revealing entirely his own character rather than that of his uncle and teacher, Canaletto. Bellotto entered Canaletto's studio around 1735 and was to remain there until his visit to Rome in 1742 and afterwards until 1747 when he left Venice forever in response to a summons from Augustus III, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony to the court of Dresden.
The degree of Bellotto's participation in Canaletto's paintings at this date is hard to ascertain exactly, and even in the eighteenth century there was confusion over this point. His first biographer, Pietro Guarienti wrote that 'his scenes of Venice were so carefully and so realistically done that it was exceedingly difficult to distinguish his work from his uncle's (P.A. Orlandi, Abecedario Pittorico, Corretto e accresciuto da P. Guarienti, 1753, p. 101).
In the early 1740's Canaletto and Bellotto were working side by side, as can be seen by a comparison with the present painting and Canaletto's View of the Grand Canal formerly in the collection of Robert Lehman, New York, and now in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu (W.G. Constable, op. cit., 1976, II, no. 180). Other instances of Bellotto re-using Canaletto's compositions at this date can be seen by comparing both artists' views of Campo SS Giovanni e Paolo in the Springfield Museum of Art (Bellotto) and the National Gallery of Art, Washington (Canaletto), for which see T. Pignatti, Gli inizi di Bernardo Bellotto, in Arte Veneta, XX, 1966, p. 219, fig. 260; and Bellotto's view of the Campo Santo Stefano at Castle Howard and Canaletto's view of the same at Woburn Abbey (W.G. Constable, op. cit., 1976, II, no. 284). Bellotto's work is already at this stage recognizably different from Canaletto's, with his distinctive and much sharper steely-grey light, subtle but emphatic shadows, and more incisive rendering of architectural details, and tall figures whose faces are abbreviated to simple blobs of paint.
Other versions of the present lot by Bellotto are in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and formerly (?) in the Otto Hirsch collection, Frankfurt, 1925 (see S. Kozakiewicz, op. cit., II, nos. 7-8).
A related drawing by Bellotto showing elements of both the present painting and the other versions is in the Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt (Inv. no. AE 2194), fig. 1
The degree of Bellotto's participation in Canaletto's paintings at this date is hard to ascertain exactly, and even in the eighteenth century there was confusion over this point. His first biographer, Pietro Guarienti wrote that 'his scenes of Venice were so carefully and so realistically done that it was exceedingly difficult to distinguish his work from his uncle's (P.A. Orlandi, Abecedario Pittorico, Corretto e accresciuto da P. Guarienti, 1753, p. 101).
In the early 1740's Canaletto and Bellotto were working side by side, as can be seen by a comparison with the present painting and Canaletto's View of the Grand Canal formerly in the collection of Robert Lehman, New York, and now in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu (W.G. Constable, op. cit., 1976, II, no. 180). Other instances of Bellotto re-using Canaletto's compositions at this date can be seen by comparing both artists' views of Campo SS Giovanni e Paolo in the Springfield Museum of Art (Bellotto) and the National Gallery of Art, Washington (Canaletto), for which see T. Pignatti, Gli inizi di Bernardo Bellotto, in Arte Veneta, XX, 1966, p. 219, fig. 260; and Bellotto's view of the Campo Santo Stefano at Castle Howard and Canaletto's view of the same at Woburn Abbey (W.G. Constable, op. cit., 1976, II, no. 284). Bellotto's work is already at this stage recognizably different from Canaletto's, with his distinctive and much sharper steely-grey light, subtle but emphatic shadows, and more incisive rendering of architectural details, and tall figures whose faces are abbreviated to simple blobs of paint.
Other versions of the present lot by Bellotto are in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and formerly (?) in the Otto Hirsch collection, Frankfurt, 1925 (see S. Kozakiewicz, op. cit., II, nos. 7-8).
A related drawing by Bellotto showing elements of both the present painting and the other versions is in the Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt (Inv. no. AE 2194), fig. 1