Answering such questions is not easy, especially when the author of the paintings in question is an artist of the calibre of Bernardo Bellotto (1721-1780), better known in Poland under the artistic nickname Canaletto. His contribution to Polish culture cannot be overestimated, but the question remains: can his paintings, located outside the country, be considered Polish?

Those created in Warsaw on the commission of King Stanisław August Poniatowski, who wished to create a collection worthy of a modern ruler, undoubtedly are - precisely because of the person of the commissioning party and the context in which they were created. Even if they do not grow directly out of Polish culture and do not depict places in Poland, their conscious patronage, place of creation and function within the royal collection make them part of the Polish cultural heritage.

In the case of the Dresden paintings, the matter is more complex. They were not created with the Polish royal court in mind and did not function in its cultural environment, so it is difficult to consider them as Polonica. In the same way that a mass composed by Bach for the Saxon elector Frederick August II, even if he was also August III, King of Poland, is not Polonica.

These are primarily works created as part of Saxon patronage. While it is true that they remain important not only for Dresden but also - indirectly - for the modernisation processes in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, this connection alone is not sufficient basis for seeing them as an integral part of the Polish heritage.

Bellotto in Poland

Bernardo Bellotto was the nephew of Giovanni Antonio Canal (1697-1768) , who was the first to use the nickname Canaletto - and it was after him that Bellotto took over this designation. The Italian artist arrived in Warsaw in 1767, three years after the coronation of Stanisław August Poniatowski. At the time, he already had experience of working at the courts of Dresden, Vienna and Munich, and the capital of the Republic was only supposed to be a stopover on his way to St Petersburg. However, the opposite happened and Bellotto remained in Poland for the rest of his life.

Like other foreigners such as Marcello Bacciarelli and Dominick Merlini, Canaletto became part of the royal project to develop Polish culture. It was probably Bacciarelli who kept him in Poland and recommended him to Poniatowski. The ruler must have known and valued the work of the painter previously associated with the Vettin court, since he quite quickly entrusted him with important commissions, and already the following year made him the official royal painter. It cannot be ruled out that, for Stanislaus Augustus, the acquisition of the former Saxon painter had an additional psychological attraction - but this is only conjecture.

Bernardo Bellotto brought to Poland the tradition of vedutas , or urban landscapes based on precision, dramatic light and attention to detail, but which at the same time contained a certain political message: the depiction of prosperous, orderly, well-run cities.

A royal commission

A special place among Bellotto's paintings is given to a series commissioned by Stanislaus Augustus, depicting views of Rome and inspired by the fashionable etchings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1788) . These works were intended not only to decorate the royal residence, but also as an educational reference point - a visual lesson in history, architecture and the republican idea, with which Poniatowski identified Rome. The commission was in keeping with the Enlightenment model of a ruler whose task was, among other things, to create a collection that included both works by old masters and contemporary fashionable trends. For this reason, Bellotto's commission of paintings modelled on Piranesi was hardly surprising.

Bellotto, probably in collaboration with his son Lorenzo, painted fifteen paint ings , depicting both ancient monuments (including Trajan's Column, the Roman Forum, the Forum of Nerva, the Capitol) and papal Rome (including views of Santa Maria Maggiore, the Piazza della Rotonda and the interior of St Peter's Basilica). The paintings were created in Warsaw between 1767 and 1770.

The composition of each of them reproduces Piranesi's engravings quite faithfully, although Bellotto also introduces significant changes - he adds genre scenes, broadens perspective and monumentalises architectural blocks. An excellent example of this is the veduta " View of the Square and Church of Santa Maria Maggiore" - the iconographically richest painting. It depicts not only the Baroque façade of the Roman basilica, but also the crowd of figures in the square and the symbolism associated with the legend of the miracle of the snow. Bellotto - consciously or intuitively - depicts here not only architecture but also a cultural narrative.

The Roman cycle was originally intended to decorate the rooms of the Ujazdowski Castle, which the king was trying to transform into a suburban residence. This project fell through rather quickly and the paintings, if they were there at all, were moved to another location, perhaps to the Lazienki Park. However, Andrzej Rottermund hypothesised that, at least for a time, they ended up in the Royal Castle, sharing space with the vedutas belonging to a series of views of Warsaw created from 1770.

After the death of Stanisław August in 1798, the collection of paintings, like the entire collection of works of art belonging to the king, was dispersed. The vedutas depicting the Eternal City - as private property - passed into the hands of his heirs. Initially they belonged to Prince Józef Poniatowski, and in 1813 they were inherited by his sister, Countess Maria Teresa Tyszkiewiczowa. In 1821 (1819 is also sometimes cited), seven paintings were sold to the Milanese antiquarian Antonio Fussi, and it was probably he who resold four of them to Russia. Three, however, remained in private hands in Milan.

It is worth mentioning that another painting from the series, ' View of the Capitol with the Church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli ' , returned to the Royal Castle in Warsaw in 2018 . This work had previously been in private collections in the West and was purchased thanks to a special grant from the Prime Minister's Office.

Roman views in Russian collections

In Russia, three of Canaletto's vedutas ended up in the collection of Elisabeth Alexeyevna Naryshkina at the Stepanovskoye estate, while the 'View of the Piazza Navona' was in the estate of the Kurakin princes in the Tver Governorate. In 1913, all the paintings were deposited in the State Tretyakov Gallery, from where they were transferred to the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow in 1924. At least one of them, 'Piazza della Rotonda with Pantheon', had no recognised authorship at the time and was listed as the work of an 18th-century Italian painter. Only conservation work carried out between 1939 and 1940 revealed the signature and date.

Eventually, the four Bellotto paintings that ended up in Russia were separated again. Two - " Piazza della Rotonda with Pantheon " and " Roman Forum as seen from the Capitol" - remained in the collection of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. "View of the Piazza and the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore " was donated in 1931, along with other paintings of Western painting, to the Far Eastern Art Museum in Khabarovsk, while " View of the Piazza Navona " was donated to the Gorky Art Museum in Nizhny Novgorod (now the State Art Museum).

The paintings are shown in permanent and temporary exhibitions, including outside Russia - including a planned exhibition in 2021 - in collaboration with Italian partners - entitled 'Three Periods of Rome. Antiquity. Renaissance. Baroque', but after the Russian aggression against Ukraine the realisation of this project became impossible.

All four works form a separate chapter in the history of the Roman cycle created on the orders of Stanisław August Poniatowski. Although they are physically in Russian collections today, their pedigree, intention of creation and style link them inextricably to the culture of the Polish Enlightenment.

An inverted clock

There are several intriguing details associated with Canaletto's vedutas held in Russian collections today.

The previously mentioned conservation work carried out between 1939 and 1940 revealed the signature 'Canaletti fecerunt ' on the painting ' Piazza della Rotonda with Pantheon' , which confirmed earlier speculation that not only Bernardo but also his son Lorenzo had worked on the canvas. Bellotto, like many 18th-century masters, worked within the family workshop. This seemingly marginal detail opens up the field for further comparative research: between the style of the father and that of the son, between Piranesi's printmaking and Bellotto's painterly interpretation, between the royal idea and the later reception of the cycle.

In the course of conservation, not only was the signature and date uncovered, but also the dirt and secondary layers of varnish , which had darkened the sky for decades and disturbed the legibility of perspective, were removed . The treatment restored clarity to the composition and allowed the provenance of the painting to be confirmed.

Moreover, fragments of inventory numbers are visible on the paintings. In the Polish literature they are sometimes linked to the later Russian collection, in the Russian one to the Polish collection. In practice, we still do not know when and in what context these markings were applied.

An observant painting enthusiast may also notice an interesting detail depicted in the painting ' View of the Square and Church of Santa Maria Maggiore'. - the clock on the tower of the basilica has the arrangement of the numerals reversed. However, this is not a trick of Canaletto himself; the artist repeated this motif after Piranesi, and it refers to the so-called Italian reckoning of time, in which the day was counted from sunset.

The dials of such clocks nowadays give the impression of being 'twisted' with respect to the modern layout. They were originally modelled on sundials. They used 12- or 24-hour dials with Roman numerals, and 24 o'clock was at nightfall - the end of the day. This system was sometimes cumbersome, as it required regular correction of the dials, but it better adapted to the rhythm of the day determined by natural light. Similarly, the so-called Nuremberg system worked, in which day and night were divided into equal hours, but the number of hours changed with the season. Both solutions were eventually superseded by astronomical reckoning, first with the start of the day at noon and then at midnight.

Catalogue of Bernard Bellotto's paintings in Russia

1. "Piazza della Rotonda with the Pantheon "
   1769 year
   Oil on canvas
   116 cm x 173 cm
   Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow
   Inv. no. Ж-1510
2. "Roman Forum seen from the Capitol "
   1769 year
   Oil on canvas
   173 x 116 cm
   Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow
   Inv. no. Ж-1517
3. "View of Piazza Navona "
   1769 year
   Oil on canvas
   116.5 x 171 cm
   State Art Museum, Nizhny Novgorod
   (former Gorky Art Museum)
4. "View of the square and church of Santa Maria Maggiore"
   1769
   Oil on canvas
   116 x 173 cm
   Museum of Far Eastern Art, Khabarovsk
   Inv. no. Ж-580