The Canaletto Room

Look at the details rather than the whole. Bellotto worked with a camera obscura and a ruler, and every window, cornice and paving stone is in its place, but he also filled the streets with life: a dog fight, a man relieving himself against a wall, the painter himself with his family in the foreground of one view. The colour is cooler than his uncle's Venice, with silvery skies and sharp shadows that suit the northern light. Among the finest are the view of Krakowskie Przedmieście with its churches and palaces, the Miodowa Street with the Capuchin church, and the wide panorama of the city seen from the far bank of the Vistula.

The paintings were carried off to Russia after the partitions and returned under the Treaty of Riga in nineteen twenty two, then evacuated in nineteen thirty nine and hidden, which is why they survived when the castle did not. After the war they served an unexpected purpose: architects rebuilding the Old Town used Bellotto's views as their guide for facades, so that the Warsaw you have walked through this morning owes its appearance in part to these canvases. The room itself, with its panelling and green walls, was reconstructed around them.

Did You Know? The architects who rebuilt the Old Town after the war used these paintings as blueprints, so parts of modern Warsaw were copied from Bellotto.