Buzási Enikő szerk.: In Europe' Princely Courts, Ádám Mányoki, Actors and venues of a portraitist's career (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2003/1)

Harald Marx: "THE LUCKY STAR OF PAINTING HAS RISEN" Painting and Art Patronage in Dresden under Augustus the Strong and Augustus III

One of the most frequently commissioned painters in Dresden in the mid-18

th century was Stefano Torelli (1712-1784), whose ceiling and wall frescos should be among the first mentioned of the crowning achievements of Late Baroque monumental painting in Saxony. In his 1782 Beschreibung der vorzüglichsten Merkwürdigkeiten der Churfürstlichen Residenzstadt Dresden, Karl Wilhelm Daßdorf noted, "His paintings appearing in public spaces, some ceiling frescos and altar pictures, produced in grandiose style here in Dresden, are proof of great artistic talent."

50 If Daßdorf, who held Neoclassicism, then a new trend, in far greater esteem than Late Baroque art, praised Torelli, then the painter's works must have amazed even those, who - in the wake of Winckelmann and Mengs - believed themselves to be closer to "good taste" than this Italian court painter of late "Augustan" Dresden. As the protege of count Heinrich Brühl and the whole Brühl family, Torelli had many opportunities to prove his worth, painting various portraits, too, besides the great ornamental works. Christian Ludwig Hagedorn, whom we can consider an expert critic of the arts, declared in 1755, "However good he may be at portraiture, this is still the least of his talents."

57 One of the artists of greatest stature invited to Dresden under Augustus III was Bernardo Bellotto, otherwise known as Canaletto (1721-1780), who found assignments here commensurate with his talents. His vedutas evoke the architectural sights and urban life of Dresden, satisfying the (understandable) wish of the court to preserve the royal residence, at its height, for posterity in monumental townscapes.

58 As a vedutist, Bellotto only partly fits in with Dresden landscape painting, the first great representative of which was Johann Alexander Thiele in the 18

th century.

59 Thiele not only painted Prospekte, or topographically more or less correct panoramas of Saxony, but he also produced autonomously composed landscapes. Bellotto took an objective approach to the beauty of the townscape. His sense of proportion and structural lucidity did not tolerate pictorial allusions. His loyalty to both the whole and the detail does not mar the harmony of his pictures. Bellotto used a camera obscura, an optical tool for the correct representation of perspective, when he made his sketches, but this reference only partly explains his working method. Sharply differentiating between details in light and shade proved just as effective a tool in giving plasticity to observed matter as linear clarity is in suggesting perspective. Bellotto also made a series of large etchings of his Dresden vedutas. His venture probably only compares to Giovanni Battista Piranesi's (1720-1778) vedutas of Rome etched on copperplates in the same period, but it is true that Thiele had published the engraved copies of his Saxon Prospekte more than twenty years earlier, in 1726. Count Pietro Rotari, born in Verona, arrived in Dresden in 1752 or 1753 and left the town in spring 1756. Rotari had studied in Venice and Rome, and his art was close to that of his teacher Francesco Trevisani (1656-1746), as well as Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (1708-1787) and Francesco Solimena (16 5 7-1747). During his stay in Dresden he painted two large altarpieces for the Hofkirche: Vision of St Ignatius of Loyola and Death of St Francis Xaver. Rotari painted the portraits of the king, queen and their children; excellent copies of the ten portraits also survive from the period. His series of studies of young and old heads were meant as representations of various emotions. In 1782 Jean August Lehninger described Rotari in these words: "Each of his pictures proves that he was principally engrossed in studying the expression of various passions in a faithful division of light and shade."

60 With his expression of passion Rotari was closest to the great French painter of the 17

th century, Charles Le Brun.

61 In terms of style, his painting is comparable to that of Anton Raphael Mengs: the forms of his portraits are clear and monument-like. His portrait of Augustus III is apparently based on Mengs' pastel of the king made in 1744, while Mengs' pastel suggests the influence of Silvestre.

62 It should be noted at this point that there are some analogies between Mengs and Rotari, as well as between them and the globe-trotting pastel painter of Geneva, Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702-1789), who already had four pastels in Dresden at the time.

63 The above-mentioned Anton Kern also played an important role among the artists employed in Dresden. He studied at the Latin school of the monastery of Mariaschein in North Bohemia where he met Lorenzo Rossi (ca. 1690-1731), court painter in Dresden, who took him along to the Saxon residence in 1722/23, becoming his first teacher. Kern followed Rossi to Venice and remained there for seven years, employed in the workshop of Giovanni Battista Pittoni (1687-1767). Then he worked in Bohemia; his main commissioner, the Osek Abbey of the Cistercians, housed the richest collection of Kern's works in the 18

th-century. In the mid-1730s he enrolled in Prague University. He visited Dresden in 1738 and went to Rome in the same year on a grant from Augustus III. In Rome he worked with Francesco Trevisani, and returned to Dresden in 1741 to become a court painter. As a sign of appreciation, the court of Dresden contracted him for the decoration of the Hofkirche, but his early death prevented him from living up to the great and justified expectations. It is rarely mentioned that Francesco Casanova (1727-1802), brother of the great adventurer, Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798), and the director of the academy of Dresden, Giovanni Battista Casanova, lived in Dresden from 1752 to 1757. The swashbuckler himself wrote about Francesco's stay: "My brother spent four years in this lovely town immersed in studies of its art;