Bernardo Bellotto

Bernardo Bellotto (1721 or 1722 – 17 October 1780) was an Italian urban landscape painter or vedutista, and printmaker in etching. Today, he is mostly remembered for his vedute of European cities (Dresden, Vienna, Turin and Warsaw). He was the pupil and nephew of Canaletto and sometimes used the latter's illustrious name, signing himself as Bernardo Canaletto. In Germany and Poland, Bellotto called himself by his uncle's name, Canaletto.

"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."

View of Warsaw from the Praga bank, painted 1770.

Colonel Piotr Königsfels teaching Prince Józef Poniatowski how to ride, 1773

In his paintings, Bellotto paid great attention to the way he represented works of architecture and how the light illuminated the scene. It is plausible that Bellotto, and other Venetian masters of vedute, may have used the camera obscura in order to achieve superior precision of urban views.

Related pages

• List of Italian painters