Bernardo Bellotto, was an Italian urban landscape painter or vedutista, and printmaker in etching famous for his vedute of European cities – Dresden, Vienna, Turin, and Warsaw. He was the student and nephew of the renowned Giovanni Antonio Canal Canaletto and sometimes used the latter's illustrious name, signing himself as Bernardo Canaletto. In Germany and Poland, Bellotto called himself by his uncle's name, Canaletto. This caused some confusion, however Bellotto’s work is more sombre in color than Canaletto's and his depiction of clouds and shadows brings him closer to Dutch painting.
Detail of Self-portrait as Venetian ambassador (c. 1765)
Architectural Capriccio with a palace, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao
Dresden From the Right Bank of the Elbe Above the Augustus Bridge, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister
'Capriccio of the Capitol'. "Bellotto's urban scenes have the same carefully drawn realism as his uncle's Venetian views but are marked by heavy shadows and are darker and colder in tone and colour."[citation needed]
A veduta is a highly detailed, usually large-scale painting or, more often, print of a cityscape or some other vista. The painters of vedute are referred to as vedutisti.
Rome, a view of the Tiber, Castel Sant'Angelo, Ponte Sant'Angleo, Saint Peter's Basilica by Hendrik Frans van Lint; 1734, oil on canvas, 47 × 72 cm, private collection
View of Bracciano by Paul Bril; early 1620s, oil on canvas, 75 × 164 cm, Art Gallery of South Australia.
Westminster Bridge, with the Lord Mayor's Procession on the Thames by Canaletto, 1747
Santa Maria del Rosario in Venice by Federico del Campo, 1899