Descrizione
This lavishly illustrated book highlights the Italian painter and printmaker’s capacity to create paintings of European cities that are both remarkably realistic and compositionally idealistic. Depicting Venice, Dresden, Vienna, Turin, Warsaw and Florence,
the paintings demonstrate an elaborate attention to architectural and natural detail and a sophisticated use of light to accentuate the sense of place. By juxtaposing the paintings with Bellotto’s preparatory sketches, the book also sheds light on his complicated process, which is thought to have included the use of a popular optical aid of the time, the camera obscura. It also offers a contemporary artistic re-evaluation of the paintings through the medium of photography. Bringing together many well-known works by Venetian vedutisti
(others in this European tradition of very accurate architectural painting) with a trove of paintings rarely seen, including a series of highly idealised architectural depictions, the book illustrates Bellotto’s critical contribution to this important European tradition.
