View of Mestre
ca. 1740–41
Medium
Pen and brownish black ink, gray wash, over traces of graphite
Dimensions
11 5/8 x 16 1/16 in. (29.5 x 40.8 cm)
Classification
Drawings
Department
Robert Lehman Collection
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Robert Lehman Collection, 1975
Accession Number
1975.1.309
Tags
Art Historical Context
Bernardo Bellotto’s *View of Mestre* captures the quiet charm of a small town just across the lagoon from Venice. Created around 1740–41, when the young artist was still in his late teens and working closely with his famous uncle Canaletto, the drawing reflects the growing taste for accurate, atmospheric townscapes known as *vedute*. Bellotto would later become celebrated across Europe for his precise yet poetic renderings of cities, but this early sheet already shows his gift for recording architecture and light with clarity and feeling. Executed in pen and brownish-black ink with delicate g...
About the Artist
Bernardo Bellotto · 1722–1780
Bernardo Bellotto (1722–1780) was an Italian painter of exceptional gifts who carried the art of the veduta — the precisely observed topographical view — from Venice across the courts of northern Europe, leaving behind some of the most detailed and haunting urban panoramas in the history of Western painting. Born in Venice, he was the nephew and pupil of the great vedutista Giovanni Antonio Canal,...