CANALETTO & BELLOTTO. Die Idee einer europäischen Stadt

There are images that do not simply show what the world looks like – they shape how we see it.

The vedute of Canaletto and Bernardo Bellotto belong to this kind of image. To this day, they define our idea of Europe in the eighteenth century: cities as spaces of clarity, order, and legibility. A Europe that recognizes itself in the light of the Enlightenment – and at the same time stages itself.

And yet, this gaze is not innocent. What unfolds before us with astonishing precision – every façade, every roof tile, every perspectival line – is also the result of a decision. These cities are observed, but also constructed. They do not simply show what is, but what is meant to be seen. Between scientific accuracy and theatrical staging, a pictorial space emerges in which reality and imagination become indistinguishable.

It is precisely here that their true modernity lies. What becomes visible is not only the city as an architectural body, but as a social space: a network of encounters, hierarchies, and negotiations. Nobility, bourgeoisie, labour – all appear, not at the margins, but at the centre of the image. The city becomes a stage on which a society presents itself, reflects on itself – and at the same time orders itself.

And yet, beneath the surface of this apparent harmony, fractures begin to emerge. While Canaletto bathes the city in an even light, Bellotto opens up spaces of contrast. Light and shadow, proximity and distance, wealth and poverty – they diverge and give rise to a second reading. One that does not merely describe, but questions. Not loudly, not demonstratively – but unmistakably.

Thus, the city becomes the site of a double movement: it is the expression of a shared European space – and at the same time a field of differences, tensions, and perspectives. And perhaps this is precisely what makes these images so relevant today. For they remind us that every view of the city is also a form of selection. That visibility is constructed. That what we see tells us as much about ourselves as it does about the world we are looking at.

The film accompanying the exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien follows this trace. It invites us to encounter these seemingly familiar images anew – and to recognize in them not only views of cities, but ways of thinking.

https://www.khm.at/

Interviewee: Jonathan Fine, Mateusz Mayer
Artworks by: Giovanni Antonio Canal (Canaletto), Bernardo Bellotto

Copyright info: The audio and video recording has been made with personal permission of the artist.
Licensing: 0
Language(s): German
Subtitles: English
Producer: KA21 GmbH / CastYourArt
Production crew: Wolfgang Haas, Helmut Feier, Michael Rottmann
Production country: Austria, Vienna