|  | View of Pirna and the Fortress of Sonnenstein
Item 1 on 21
European Painting
Painting (Paysage)
Material : Oil on canvas
Date : between 1755 and 1765
Area related : Italy
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Bellotto was trained by his uncle, Antonio Canal, called Canaletto (1697-1768), the foremost early eighteenth-century Venetian painter of townscapes. After travels through much of Italy, around 1746 Bellotto was appointed Court Painter to the Elector of Saxony in Dresden. He was assigned to produce views of the Saxon capital and its environs. In 1753, Bellotto was asked to extend this series to Pirna, a town near Dresden. He produced eleven large-scale paintings of the town (now in the Dresden Picture Gallery). The Art Institute painting is the artist's much reduced but exact replica of one of these celebrated works.
Bellotto's paintings are characterized by a clarity of detail that extends to the limits of the view represented, as if the viewer were looking through a telescope with a wide-angle lens. The cold, crystalline light in his works perfectly captures atmospheric conditions in North-Central Europe. His uncanny, quasi-surreal vision is complemented by the matter-of (fact depiction of every day human activities.
The fortress of Sonnenstein dominates the Art Institute painting from its hilltop; the gothic Marienkirche (church of Mary) and its octogonal bell-tower are visible in the middle distance. Horsemen, carriages, and pedestrians traverse the Breite Gasse (Broad Street). In the foreground, on front of the smithy, a small obelisk bears the royal arms of Saxony.
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Les vedute
Le XVIIIème vénitien donnera naissance aux vedutisti, premiers des artistes qui délaisseront les paysages composés pour les paysages sur le motif.
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