Bernardo Bellotto Venice 1722 - 1780 Warsaw

Probably Wellesley collection, sale, London, in these Rooms, 25 June onwards, 1866, lot 994 (as Canaletto);
Emile Calando (his inventory number 117 on the mount, as Canaletto, paid 30 francs)

Probably W.G. Constable, Canaletto, Oxford 1989, vol. II, under no. 715

This previously unknown drawing is a very important and interesting addition to the graphic corpus of Bernardo Bellotto.  We are grateful to Bozena Anna Kowalczyk for confirming the attribution and for providing us with the following information.  She has pointed out that this is the pendant to another drawing by Bellotto, The Arch of Septimius Severus and the Church of San Adriano on the Forum (fig. 1), now in Munich (Graphische Sammlung, inv. no.21055, see fig.1).  The Munich sheet is stylistically very close to the present drawing, is of very similar size (245 by 359mm), and is executed in the same media.  Both these views of the Forum are also found in two drawings by Canaletto, datable to 1742 and now at Windsor Castle (inv. nos. RL7538 and RL7522; see Bozena Anna Kowalczyk, Canaletto, Il trionfo della veduta, exhibition catalogue, Rome, Palazzo Giustiniani, 2005, cat. nos. 41 and 42, both reproduced). 

Thomas Ashby, in 1915, was the first to notice that the Canaletto view of The Arch of Septimius Severus and the Church of San Adriano is based on a print by Etienne du Pérac, from his volume entitled Vestigi dell' Antichità di Roma, first published in 1575 (see Thomas Ashby, Le diverse edizioni de 'I Vestigi dell' Antichità di Roma', Florence 1915).  The same connection with a Peràc print holds true for the present view, where the temple of Antoninus and Faustina appears as it was before the reconstruction of the church of San Lorenzo in Miranda by Torriani in 1602 (the church had been destroyed in 1536 for the visit of Charles V to Rome).  In 1972 Stephan Kozakiewicz wrote, of the Munich drawing: It does not appear to be a copy  of a similar drawing by Canale in the royal collection at Windsor......, since it renders clearly certain details (e.g. on the houses in the background ) which are obliterated in Canale's hatched drawing (see S. Kozakiewicz, Bernardo Bellotto, 2 vols., London 1972, vol. II, p. 52, under cat. no. 70).  This opinion is shared by Bozena Anna Kowalczyk, who believes this and its pendant by Bellotto to be datable around 1742 and to be the prototypes on which Canaletto based his Windsor drawings.  Close examination bears this out, as the details in this Bellotto, especially in the architecture, are very much clearer than in the Canaletto drawings at Windsor.

Bozena Anna Kowalczyk has also made three other interesting observations about this drawing, and its relationship with the versions of the view by Canaletto and du Pérac.  Firstly, Bellotto has misspelled the name of the temple, while Canaletto's inscription is correct.  Also, the composition in the Bellotto extends slightly further to the right.  Lastly, she notes that Bellotto's drawing is in fact not exactly faithful to the Ètienne du Pérac print.  In the print, the view extends further to the right, to include the whole façade of SS. Cosma e Damiano.  Furthermore, Bellotto has shown the temple of Antoninus and Faustina from a different perspective.  Much as in the Munich drawing of The Arch of Septimius Severus and the Church of San Adriano, the temple is here seen frontally, which suggests that the present view is an adaptation from the print, most probably made by Bellotto as a deliberate pendant to the Munich drawing. 

It is likely that the present drawing is the one referred to by Constable (loc. cit.), who notes in his entry for the Windsor Canaletto that a brown ink drawing of the same view, with dimensions corresponding to those of the present sheet, was offered as Canaletto in the Wellesley sale of 1866.

We are grateful to Charles Beddington who, having seen the original, has confirmed  the attribution to Bellotto.