To celebrate what would have been Bernardo Bellotto’s 300th birthday, two museums have joined forces to organize an exhibition presenting the creative path and achievements of one of the most famous vedutistas to ever have lived.

With no other institutions in the world owning more works by Bellotto than Dresden’s Staatliche Kunstsammlungen and The Royal Castle in Warsaw, the collaboration has ensured that fans of the artist will never have a better chance to see such a complete presentation of this artist’s oeuvre.

Having been first presented in Dresden’s Gemäldegalerie earlier in the year, this September will see the exhibition shift eastwards to Warsaw. Although differing in content, some selected works will have been showcased at both.

Among other things, the exhibition will include pictures, graphics and drawings characteristic of Bellotto’s respective creative periods. The first part will comprise works from his youth spent in Venice and from his travels around Italy: Florence, Milan, Rome and Verona.

The second part, meanwhile, will be devoted to the artist’s stay in Dresden, where he spent more than twenty-years working at the Wettins’ court. This period included a hiatus, as following the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War in Europe, Bellotto was forced to seek employment in Vienna and Munich.

The painter spent his last creative years in Warsaw, working for King Stanisław August and representatives of the Polish aristocracy. An ensemble of 22 vedute presenting the city of Warsaw and its vicinity (the largest collection of Bellotto’s works in existence) may be admired, until this day, at The Royal Castle in Warsaw, in a room designed specifically at the behest of the Polish king.

The Warsaw leg of the exhibition will include Bernardo Bellotto’s works sourced from, inter alia, the National Gallery and the British Museum in London, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the J.P. Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, the Manchester Gallery of Art, Museo Capodimonte in Naples, the Pinacoteca del Castello Sforzesco in Milan, the Musei Reali in Turin and the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden.

Bernardo Bellotto. On the 300th Anniversary of the Painter’s Birth

When: September 23rd until January 10th

Where: The Royal Castle in Warsaw (Pl. Zamkowy 4)

Tickets: PLN 40 (PLN 30 reduced)