Bernardo Bellotto - View of Verona and the River Adige from the Ponte Nuovo. 1747-48. Oil on canvas. Gemäldegalerie, Dresden, Germany.
Bellotto had enormous success and his reputation spread throughout the whole of Central Europe. In 1758, the Empress Maria-Teresa summoned him to Vienna, where he painted views of the capital's Gothic and Baroque monuments.
His next stop was Munich where, from 1761, he worked for the Elector of Bavaria. After five years there Bellotto returned to Dresden. In 1764-1766, he was a teacher at the Dresden Academy.
In late 1766, he went to Warsaw. He had hoped eventually to reach St. Petersburg and work for Empress Catherine II but he stayed permanently in Warsaw at the urging of the recently crowned king, Stanislaus II Augustus Poniatowski. His views of Warsaw are nearly all collected in the city's Royal Castle. Thanks to the fact that their poetic quality was combined with faultless accuracy, they were used as a draft for rebuilding Warsaw after its near-total destruction in the Second World War.
Bernardo Bellotto died in Warsaw in 1780.
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Blessings and best wishes - S.