Canaletto and Bellotto, side by side in Vienna
Two men painted the eighteenth-century city better than anyone else, and they were family. Giovanni Antonio Canal, known as Canaletto, made Venice legible: the water, the light, the crowd on the quay. His nephew Bernardo Bellotto took that method north and used it on Vienna, Dresden and Warsaw. Until 6 September the Kunsthistorisches Museum hangs them together.
The museum brings its own pictures — Canaletto's The Riva degli Schiavoni in Venice from around 1730, and Bellotto's panoramic View of Vienna from the Belvedere of 1759/60 — alongside loans that rarely travel. The Wallace Collection sends Venice: The Bacino di San Marco from San Giorgio Maggiore; the Lobkowicz Collections in Prague lend London: The River Thames on Lord Mayor's Day, painted around 1748 during Canaletto's English years; Compton Verney contributes The Interior of the Rotunda, Ranelagh.
Bellotto is the surprise of the show. Beyond the topographical views there is an Architectural Capriccio from around 1765, on loan from the Royal Castle in Warsaw, in which the painter puts himself into the scene dressed as a Venetian nobleman — a quiet joke about a Venetian who had spent his career working for courts abroad. The Princely Collections of Liechtenstein add his view of the Liechtenstein Garden Palace seen from the Belvedere.
Seen next to each other, the family resemblance is obvious and so is the difference. Canaletto composes for pleasure; Bellotto records with something closer to a surveyor's eye, which is why his Vienna and Warsaw views were later used to rebuild what war destroyed.
Canaletto & Bellotto runs from 24 March to 6 September 2026 at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Maria-Theresien-Platz, Vienna. Open daily 10:00–18:00, Thursdays until 21:00.
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Photos: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna