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Provenance

Private collection, Saxony.[1] Possibly (Sabin, London); sold 1928 to (Karl Haberstock, Berlin), possibly until 1936.[2] Acquired by Dr. Gustav Mez [d. 1944], Rorschacherberg, Switzerland;[3] (Rosenberg and Stiebel, New York); purchased 1951 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[4] gift 1961 to NGA.

Exhibition History

1956
Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1956, no. 8.
1990
Bernardo Bellotto: Verona e la città europee, Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona, 1990, no. 45.
1996
Obras Maestras de la National Gallery of Art de Washington, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City, 1996-1997, unnumbered catalogue, 78-79, color repro.

Technical Summary

The support is an open, plain-weave fabric of medium to coarse weight. The ground appears to be a warm, gray-brown layer with large pigment particles. It was apparently applied with brushes or tools that left arc-shaped or parallel strokes in the ground layer. A brown imprimatura layer appears beneath the paint in the lower part of the painting, but not in the sky. The oil paint is granular with large pigment particles and was applied relatively thickly with the topmost layers exhibiting a rather high impasto and rich body. Black underdrawing is visible with a stereomicroscope in some areas, such as small windows, where it was not covered by the paint. Incised lines were used occasionally to define the outlines of the buildings. These lines are very random and do not seem to have been used for a full-scale laying in of the perspective or forms.

The painting was lined during a treatment by William Suhr in 1951. The tacking margins have been removed, but rather strong cusping along the left and right sides suggests that the painting has not been reduced in width. X-radiographs reveal an extensive loss at the lower-left side, suggesting that the child and dog seen in the original version in Munich were once present in this work, but were removed early in its history. The sky has been heavily inpainted, presumably to compensate for heavy abrasion. The varnish is moderately yellowed. Examination under ultraviolet light suggests that the painting has been inpainted at least twice.

Bibliography

1936
Fritzche, Hellmuth Allwill. Bernardo Bellotto, genannt Canaletto. Burg-bei-Magdeburg, 1936: 116, no. VG 116.
1956
Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection Acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation 1951-56. Introduction by John Walker, text by William E. Suida and Fern Rusk Shapley. National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1956: 32-34, no. 8, repro.
1959
Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 257, repro.
1960
The National Gallery of Art and Its Collections. Foreword by Perry B. Cott and notes by Otto Stelzer. National Gallery of Art, Washington (undated, 1960s): 6, as by Bernardo Bellotto.
1963
Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 318, repro.
1965
Kozakiewicz, Stefan. "Un pittore quasi sconosciuto, Lorenzo Bellotto, figlio di Bernardo e una serie bellottiana di vedute di Roma." In Venezia e la Polonia nei secoli dal XVII al XIX. Edited by Luigi Cini. Venice, 1965: 98.
1965
Pallucchini, Rodolfo. "L'arte del Bellotto." In Venezia e la Polonia nei secoli dal XVII al XIX. Edited by Luigi Cini. Venice, 1965: 79, fig. 43.
1965
Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 13.
1968
National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 6, repro.
1972
Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 24.
1972
Kozakiewicz, Stefan. Bernardo Bellotto. Translated by Mary Whittall. 2 vols. Greenwich, Connecticut, 1972: 2:233, no. 291, repro. 230.
1973
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XVI-XVIII Century. London, 1973: 167-168, fig. 320.
1974
Camesasca, Ettore. L'opera completa del Bellotto. Milan, 1974: 107, no. 167, repro. 106.
1975
European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 24, repro.
1979
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:60-61; 2:pl. 35.
1984
Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 350, no. 490, color repro., as by Bernardo Bellotto.
1985
European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 44, repro.
1990
Bellotto: Verona e le città europee. Exh. cat. Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona, 1990: 156-161, no. 45.
1991
Bayerischen Staatsgemäldesammlungen: Alte Pinakothek. Venezianische Gemälde des 18. Jahrhunderts. Edited by Rolf Kultzen and Matthias Reuss. Munich, 1991: 29.
1996
De Grazia, Diane, and Eric Garberson, with Edgar Peters Bowron, Peter M. Lukehart, and Mitchell Merling. Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 19-22, repro. 21.
1998
Rottermund, Andrzej. "Bernardo Bellotto's Unknown View of Munich," Artibus et historiae 38 (1998): 9, 10, fig. 2, 19 n. 4.

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