Art Institute of Chicago

View of Pirna with the Fortress of Sonnenstein

Bernardo Bellotto (Italian, 1721–1780)LinkedCulture matchlcp-49a1300861e1

Date: c. 1760
Medium: Oil on canvas
Culture: Italy
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Institution: Art Institute of Chicago
Object ID: 12895

From the Art Institute of Chicago record

Well trained by his uncle, Canaletto , Bernardo Bellotto quickly established his own reputation as a gifted view painter. By 1746 he was appointed court painter to the elector of Saxony in Dresden, who commissioned him to produce cityscapes. Bellotto was subsequently asked to create 11 large-scale paintings of the nearby town of Pirna; the present picture is a reduced but otherwise exact replica of one of those celebrated works. Exalted in Bellotto’s cold, crystalline light, the fortress of Sonnenstein presides over the scene from its hilltop. In the left foreground, townsfolk congregate at a small obelisk that bears the arms of Saxony.

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Provenance & credit

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Credit line: Clyde M. Carr Fund
Provenance: Oliver Latham (d. 1850?), sold Christie's London, April 13, 1850, lot 27, to Mr. Hoare for 16 gns. William Lygon, 7th Earl Beauchamp, London (died 1936) [according to archival photograph and stockbook of Arthur Tooth and Sons; information kindly provided by Simon Matthews]. Arthur Tooth, London, 1939; sold to Karl Haberstock, Berlin, April 1, 1939 [according to Tooth stockbook cited above and Ein- und Verkaufsbuch for July 1936 - December 1939 preserved in the Haberstock Stiftung, Augsburg, copy in curatorial file; the pair of paintings are also documented in the Warenkontrollbücher of 1939, 1940, and 1941; in the last book it is listed as on deposit in the Dresdener Bank, Tegernsee]; consigned by Haberstock to Julius Böhler, Munich in 1950, [letter of January 29, 2001 from Jutte Fianke, Böhler]; sold by Böhler to E. and A. Silberman, New York, in January 1951 [according to the letter from Jutta Fianke cited above]. Arthur C. Tate, New Canaan, CT, 1957 [according to Hartford 1957 exhib. cat.]. E. and A. Silberman Galleries, New York, by 1960 [advertised in Burlington Magazine, December 1960]; sold to the Art Institute, 1961.