Bernardo Bellotto
, Italian, 1721-1780
Title
Dresden from the Right Bank of the Elbe, above the Augustus BridgeDatec.1750
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions
51.5 x 84 cm
Credit LinePurchased, 1883
Object numberNGI.181
DescriptionBellotto was a nephew of Antonio Canaletto, who taught him to become a skilful painter of city views. From 1747 to 1758 he worked in Dresden at the court of Frederick Augustus II, Prince Elector and King of Poland. At Frederick’s request, the artist painted numerous views of the city to celebrate the architectural renovations promoted by the King and his father. He painted a pendant to this view of the city, looking in the other direction from below the Augustus Bridge (NGI.182). Both feature the domed Lutheran Frauenkirche, the palace of first Minister Count von Brühol along the former city ramparts, the Catholic Hofkirche and Augustus Bridge. Bellotto’s various vistas of the city, with their precise detail, have proved invaluable in rebuilding parts of the city that were destroyed during the Second World War. The foreground is enlivened by figure detail including a soldier and a woman hanging washing, as well as some of Bellotto’s court acquaintances. The two gentlemen in the middle are painters and colleagues: Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich and Johann Alexander Thiele. In the nearby group to the right are Filippo di Violante, personal physician of the king and, at the centre, the corpulent castrato singer Niccolò Pozzi, known as ‘Niccolini’. Conversing with them are a Turkish servant and the court buffoon Fröhlich, dressed in Tyrolean costume.
March 2016
ProvenanceM.B. Naryshkin collection; purchased, Paris, 5 April 1883, M.B. Naryshkin sale, lot 2 Exhibition HistoryVenetian Painting of the Eighteenth Century, Burlington Fine Arts Club, London, 1911
European Masters of the 18th Century, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1954-1955
Centenary Exhibition, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, October - December 1964
The Architecture of Ireland in Drawings & Paintings, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 1975
Masterpieces of the National Gallery of Ireland, National Gallery, London, 1985
Bernardo Bellotto, Verona e le Città Europee, Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona, 1990
Master European Paintings from the National Gallery of Ireland, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 6 June - 9 August 1992; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, 19 September - 6 December 1992; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 13 January - 28 March 1993; IBM Gallery, New York, 27 April - 26 June 1993
Bernardo Bellotto: European Vedute, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 14 March - 19 June 2005
Bellotto 300: Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden 21 May - 28 August 2022
Label TextThis painting and its pendant (NGI.182) depict a view near the famous Augustus Bridge in Dresden. Bellotto, originally from Venice, worked as a court painter for Frederick-Augustus II, the ruler of Dresden at the time. Between 1747 and 1758 Bellotto painted views of the city as his patron transformed it through an ambitious building programme. In this view, the ornate dome of the Protestant Frauenkirche dominates the skyline to the left. The figures to the left of the clothesline, in the foreground of the painting, are portraits of Bellotto’s fellow court painters Christian Dietrich and Johann Thiele.