Specialists at the Wallace Collection in London have attributed an 18th-century work depicting the Grand Canal in Venice to Bernardo Bellotto, the nephew and pupil of the famed Venetian view artist Giovanni Antonio Canal—better known as Canaletto. Canaletto was previously thought to have made the painting.
The Grand Canal with San Simeone Piccolo (around 1737) shows the church of San Simeone Piccolo on the right and the demolished church of Santa Lucia on the left. The Wallace collection believes the painting was made when Bellotto was just 15 or 16 years old, meaning it may now possess the artist’s earliest known work.
The collection says the new attribution, which is outlined in a recent catalogue Canaletto and Guardi: Views of Venice at the Wallace Collection, by Lelia Packer and Charles Beddington, is based on the “unique diagonal brushwork, the placement of the boats upon the water and the use of a cool palette which defined his later work”. The catalogue also includes 27 18th-century views of Venice by Canaletto (1697-1768) and Francesco Guardi (1712-1793), along with other painters in their circle.
When the fourth Marquess of Hertford bought The Grand Canal with San Simeone Piccolo at Christie's in 1859, it was described as a major work by Canaletto. Beddington tells The Art Newspaper: “Bellotto also called himself ‘Canaletto’, as he was Canaletto’s nephew, so in some sense the 1859 attribution was correct.”
In Beddington’s essay, he describes how in 1900 the work “was considered by Claude Phillips, the first Keeper of the Wallace Collection, as the most authentic of its Canaletti. The 1900 catalogue also states: “The most undoubted example of his art in the Wallace Collection is No.498'—no.498 being The Grand Canal with the Church of S. Simone.”
The newly attributed painting, along with others that hang alongside it in a dedicated gallery known as the Canaletto Room, have been restored following a conservation and research project lasting several years. “The museum, due to the founding bequest, is not permitted to acquire new works of art, but research and constant reappraisal of its permanent collection allows for new discoveries from time to time,” the director of the Wallace Collection, Xavier Bray, explains in a statement.
Bellotto is known for his views of northern European cities which are “characterised by panoramic compositions, strongly contrasted use of light and shadow, and meticulous attention to architectural detail”, says the National Gallery, London, in an online statement. His precise depictions of Warsaw even helped play a role in the Polish capital’s reconstruction after the Second World War.
When the artist’s View of Verona with the Ponte delle Navi sold for £10.5m (with fees) at Christie’s London in 2021, The Art Newspaper’s editor at large (art market), Anna Brady, wrote: “Bellotto was more interested in the grit of the views he depicted than his uncle”.
