Bernardo Bellotto – landscape painter

Venetian artist blessed with uncle Canaletto’s talent

A view of the New Market Square in Dresden, painted by
Bernardo Bellotto in about 1750

The landscape artist Bernardo Bellotto, a nephew and pupil of the masterful view painter Canaletto, was born on this day in 1721 in Venice, the city that brought fame to his illustrious uncle.

Bellotto painted some Venetian scenes but travelled much more extensively than his uncle and eventually became best known for his work in northern Europe, and in particular his views of the cities of Vienna, Warsaw and Dresden.

His work was notable for his use of light and shadow and his meticulous attention to detail.  His paintings of Warsaw became a point of reference for architects involved with the reconstruction of the city after the Second World War, so precise was he in terms of perspective and scale and the intricacies of architectural features.

Born in the parish of Santa Margherita in Venice, Bellotto was related to Giovanni Antonio Canal – Canaletto’s birth name – through his mother, Canaletto’s sister, Fiorenza Canal, who married Lorenzo Antonio Bellotto.

A Bellotto of the Rio dei Mendacanti with the Scuola di
San Marco in Venice, probably executed in about 1741

It was natural for Bernardo to study in his uncle’s workshop and to an extent mimic Canaletto’s style. Sometimes, he would sign a painting with Canaletto’s name, which led to confusion later as art historians were occasionally unsure as to whose brush was actually responsible for a particular work.

But where Canaletto devoted himself largely to painting in his native city and in England, where he developed a considerable following, Bellotto left Venice at the age of 21 for Rome and spent much of his life away, travelling around Italy at first and then venturing north.

He painted views of Rome, Florence, Verona and Turin before accepting an invitation in 1747 from Augustus III, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, to become his court painter in Dresden.  Those paintings he made of Dresden that have survived offer a glimpse into the outstanding beauty of the city, so much of which was destroyed by bombing during the Second World War.

As his fame spread, more invitations followed, to paint for the courts of Vienna, where he was based from 1758, and then Munich, where he moved in 1761. They were timely opportunities, given that the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War forced Augustus III’s court to disperse.

Bellotti's Self-Portrait as Venetian
Ambassador, painted in about 1765

He returned to Dresden after about a year but when Augustus III died in 1763 his importance in the city declined and he left for Russia, hoping to find employment at the court of Catherine II in St Petersburg.

Stopping off in Warsaw, however, his plans changed when he received an invitation from Augustus III’s successor, King Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski, to be resident painter at his court in Warsaw, where he would remain for the rest of his life. He tended to be known as Il Canaletto and signed himself Bernardo de Canaletto.

While in Warsaw, for the first time he painted some historical scenes as well as views, including the Election of Stanislaus Augustus, and painted his own image in robes and wig in Self-Portrait as Venetian Ambassador.

The position gave Bellotto the financial stability to provide for his wife, Elisabetta, to whom he had been married before leaving Venice, and their four children.  He died in Warsaw in 1780 and was buried at the 17^th century church of the Capuchins in Miodowa, a street in the centre of the city.

As well as his many views of city scenes and real landscapes, in which historians believe he probably made use of the camera obscura technique to achieve exact proportions and perspective, Bellotto was a proponent of the genre known as capriccio, in which the artist would indulge in fantasy by ‘moving’ famous monuments, buildings or ruins so that they could appear in the same view.

Many of his pictures can be seen in the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden, the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna and the National Museum in Warsaw.

In Italy, there are Bellotto collections at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice and at the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan.

The Campo Santa Margherita in Venice, at the heart of the
area in which Bellotto grew up

Travel tip:

Campo Santa Margherita, the main square of the parish where Bellotto grew up in the Dorsoduro area of Venice, offers visitors a glimpse of a real Venetian life in a neighbourhood away from the hordes that throng Piazza San Marco and the other main tourist locations in the city.  A large open space, the square is typically the scene of a local market, with some stalls selling fresh fish caught in the lagoon, and is surrounded by 14^th and 15^th century houses mostly occupied by Venetians.  There are a good number of restaurants and bars, which come to life at night in particular, when the square is a meeting place for students from the nearby Ca' Foscari University of Venice.

Bellotto's 1745 View of Turin Near the Royal Palace

Travel tip:

During his time in Turin, working for the court of Charles Emmanuel III of Savoy, Bellotto spent much of his time around the Royal Palace, the historic house of Savoy in the centre of the city.  Built in the 16^th century and modernised in the 17^th century, the palace complex includes the Chapel of the Holy Shroud, which was built in the west wing and joins the apse of the Cathedral of St John the Baptist. The Chapel was added to house the Holy Shroud of Turin, believed by some to be the burial shroud of Christ, which was owned by the Savoy family for almost 500 years.

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Antonio Salieri - composer

Maestro of Vienna haunted by Mozart rumours

Antonio Salieri was director of Italian opera
in the Habsburg court of Joseph II

Antonio Salieri, the Italian composer who in his later years was dogged by rumours that he had murdered Mozart, was born on this day in 1750 in Legnago, in the Veneto.

Salieri was director of Italian opera for the Habsburg court in Vienna from 1774 to 1792 and German-born Mozart believed for many years that “cabals of Italians” were deliberately putting obstacles in the way of his progress, preventing him from staging his operas and blocking his path to prestigious appointments.

In letters to his father, Mozart said that “the only one who counts in (the emperor’s eyes) is Salieri” and voiced his suspicions that Salieri and Lorenzo Da Ponte, the poet and librettist, were in league against him.

Some years after Mozart died in 1791 at the age of just 35, with the cause of death never definitively established, it emerged that the young composer - responsible for some of music’s greatest symphonies, concertos and operas - had told friends in the final weeks of his life that he feared he had been poisoned and suspected again that his Italian rivals were behind it. Salieri was immediately the prime suspect.

Despite being put forward as truth in works of literature such as Pushkin’s Little Tragedy and hardly discouraged by the portrayal of Salieri in the film Amadeus, it is largely accepted now that the story is a myth and that the two composers enjoyed a relatively cordial and mutually respectful relationship.

Mozart felt the Italians in Vienna wanted
to block the progress of his career

Yet Salieri had to live with the rumours during his lifetime. Rossini apparently teased him about it and Mozart’s father-in-law pointedly shunned him. When he became old and mentally frail, Salieri began to believe he must be guilty and while in a deranged state he supposedly confessed to the murder.

Salieri began his musical studies at home in Legnago, taught by his older brother Francesco, and by the organist of the Legnago Cathedral, Giuseppe Simoni. When he was about 13, both his parents died. He was looked after by another brother, a monk in Padua, before for unknown reasons becoming the ward of a Venetian nobleman, Giovanni Mocenigo.

While living in Venice, Salieri’s continuing musical studies brought him to the attention of the composer Florian Leopold Gassmann, who was so impressed with his protégé's talents that he took him to Vienna, where he personally directed and paid for the remainder of Salieri's musical education.

There, influenced by Gassman and Christoph Gluck, he was introduced to the emperor, Joseph II, who invited him to join in chamber music sessions. His appointment in 1774 as court composer and conductor of the Italian opera made him one of the most influential musicians in Europe.

He became a pivotal figure in the development of late 18th-century opera, helping to establish many of the features of the genre. He dominated Italian-language opera in Vienna and his works were performed across Europe. In all he wrote 37 operas, enjoying great success with many from Armida in 1771 to Cesare in Farmacusa in 1800.

Although he wrote no new operas after 1804, he remained a much sought-after teacher. Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert and Ludwig van Beethoven, and Mozart’s son, Franz Xaver Mozart, were among his pupils.

By the time of his death in 1825, his music was already disappearing from the repertoire but has enjoyed a revival in the last decade or so.

In 2004, the renovated La Scala in Milan reopened its doors with L'Europa riconosciuta – Europe revealed - the work Salieri had written for its first performance in 1778.

The soprano Cecilia Bartoli recorded an album devoted to his arias, while recordings have been made of Salieri overtures and some complete operas.

The Teatro Salieri in Legnago

Travel tip:

Legnago is a town in the Veneto about halfway between Verona and Ferrara, straddling the Adige river. It was formerly a centre for textile production although most of the factories have now closed. Legnago has had an important military role since the early Middle Ages. In the 19th century it was one of the Quadrilatero fortresses, the main strongpoint of the Austrian Lombardy-Venetia puppet state during the Italian Wars of Independence.  Legnago's theatre, constructed in the early 20th century, is called Teatro Salieri.

The Palazzi Mocenigo complex on the Grand Canal

Travel tip:

The history of the Mocenigo family in Venice, who held influence from the 14^th to the 19^th centuries, is preserved in a complex of palaces on the Grand Canal roughly opposite the San Tomà vaporetto (water bus) stop, named the Palazzi Mocenigo.   The English poet Lord Byron stayed there in the early 19^th century. Seven of the Mocenigo family were doges. Another Palazzo Mocenigo, in the San Stae area of Santa Croce, is a museum of textiles, costumes and perfume.

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