MUNICH.- Working under the name ‘Canaletto’, Bernardo Bellotto (1722–1780) and his uncle and teacher, Giovanni Antonio Canal (1697–1768) took the Venetian tradition of urban landscape painting to new heights. Bellotto’s keenly observed vedute – from Venice to Dresden, Vienna and Warsaw – are icons of eighteenth-century art and history. Their fascinating interplay of documentary precision and artistic license continues to captivate the viewer.

With numerous international loans from public and private collections, the Alte Pinakothek presents the first comprehensive Bernardo Bellotto exhibition in Germany in almost fifty years. Key works from all periods of Bellotto’s life provide a unique opportunity to follow the artist on his travels through the Europe of the Enlightenment.

Bellotto gained the patronage of the British aristocracy early in his career and went on to create distinguished paintings of cities, palaces, villas and fortresses for many royal houses in Europe. His fame grew and he was finally appointed to the prestigious position of court painter in Dresden and Warsaw. In 1761 he visited Munich, where he produced a sweeping panoramic view of the city and two paintings of Nymphenburg Palace for Maximilian III Joseph, Elector of Bavaria. These large canvases, which epitomize Bellotto’s perfect mastery of form, have been recently restored and have regained their original vibrant luminosity.

The two Munich paintings form the centrepiece of the Alte Pinakothek’s presentation of more than sixty-five paintings, drawings and etchings, among them many sensitive landscapes and virtuoso architectural fantasies that invite viewers to take a fresh look at Belotto’s creative aspirations and practice. Juxtapositions of finished paintings and preparatory studies shed light on the complex work process behind the realistic paintings that relied on the use of a camera obscura . The seemingly authentic ‘snapshot’ immediacy of Bellotto’s city views anticipates not only the compositional principles of photography but also the medium’s use of light and shadow. Yet, for all their apparent fidelity to the given topography, Bellotto’s paintings are, without exception, idealised compositions that capture a particularly typical slice of the real world and invest it with a heightened verisimilitude. As such, Bellotto’s body of work boasts a progressive awareness of the mechanisms of human perception and individual remembrance.

The exhibition also features four modern-day views of the city of Munich, taken by photographer Elmar Haardt in response to Bellotto’s works. The photographs spark an artistically and historically interesting dialogue that sheds light on the inherent qualities of the old and new forms of vedute .