Awe, reality, enigma: Pietro Bellotti and seventeenth-century painting on display in Venice

The Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice announces the opening of the exhibition Awe, Reality, Enigma. Pietro Bellotti and Seventeenth-Century Painting in Venice, which will be on view from September 19, 2025 to January 18, 2026. Curated by Francesco Ceretti, Michele Nicolaci and Filippo Piazza, the exhibition offers an in-depth analysis of the figure of Pietro Bellotti (Volciano di Salò, 1625 - Gargnano, 1700), a Brescian painter active in the Serenissima for most of his career. Bellotti is an artist who, although still little known to the general public, emerges with considerable fascination in the panorama of seventeenth-century Venetian painting.

“This is,” stresses Giulio Manieri Elia, director of the Gallerie dell’Accademia, “an ambitious exhibition, the first that the city has dedicated to seventeenth-century Venetian painting since the great exhibition of 1959. It is a work of study and research, but also of fundamental enhancement of the works in our collections, in the wake of that path of rediscovery on the Venetian seventeenth century that began with the refitting of the rooms on the ground floor and with the two conferences in the following years.”

The exhibition focuses on Bellotti’s innovative interpretation of Baroque themes, characterized by an intense observation of reality combined with unusual iconographies that create an atmosphere suspended between awe and reality. The exhibition is an opportunity to reveal to the public two major works recently acquired by the Galleries: theSelf-Portrait as an Allegory of Amazement and Popolani all’aperto. The latter, in particular, is a masterpiece of genre painting that bridges the gap between Bellotti and the early 18th-century Milanese painter Giacomo Ceruti. The work has long been at the center of an intense attributive debate, which the exhibition intends to explore in depth, also thanks to the results of the recent restoration. The exhibition itinerary is articulated in such a way as to explore Bellotti’s career and its historical context, placing it in the broader panorama of seventeenth-century Venetian painting. Visitors will thus have the opportunity to compare the artist’s works with those of his contemporaries, such as the painters Ribera, Giordano, Cagnacci and Langetti, with whom Bellotti entertained an ongoing dialogue, fueled by the influences and artistic trends of the time. In addition, the exhibition also offers comparisons with Lombard art, represented by figures such as Monsù Bernardo and the Master of the Jeans Canvas, which help to delineate a broader cultural horizon.

One aspect of great interest is the combination of painting and literature that runs through the Venetian seventeenth century. The literary and philosophical academies of the time, in fact, fueled the debate around painting, contributing to the formation of a visual reflection that was often linked to mysterious, esoteric and necromantic themes. Bellotti, in particular, stands out for his ability to translate these themes into images that seem to want to unveil the unspoken, reflecting a time when the boundary between the physical and metaphysical worlds was anything but clear. In addition to highlighting Bellotti’s work, the exhibition also offers an overview of 17th-century Venetian art through a rich program of international loans. Among the museums that have lent their works for this exhibition are the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Gallerie degli Uffizi in Florence, and the Castello Sforzesco in Milan. These loans help contextualize Bellotti’s work, establishing new comparisons with other protagonists of the period, and restore a comprehensive view of a historical period when Venetian painting was at the height of its greatness.

The exhibition, therefore, takes the form of an opportunity to rediscover the figure of Bellotti, but also to reflect on the season of Venetian painting in the seventeenth century, an era marked by continuous innovation and a constant interweaving of culture, art and philosophy. The exhibition marks an important step in the work of enhancing the collections of the Gallerie dell’Accademia, which, with the remounting of the rooms devoted to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in 2021 and the two scientific conferences dedicated to this period, has given new impetus to research on Venetian art of the seventeenth century. The exhibition itinerary, articulated and full of food for thought, culminates in a catalog that accompanies the exhibition and includes essays by well-known Italian scholars. The scientific committee that curated the exhibition is composed of experts of the caliber of Linda Borean, Francesco Frangi, Fabrizio Magani, Giulio Manieri Elia, and Alessandro Morandotti, testifying to the scientific importance of the initiative.

Notes on the artist.

Pietro Bellotti was a pupil of Girolamo Forabosco. Beginning in the 1740s, he settled in Venice, where he became a successful painter, earning the appreciation of the most influential personalities of the time. Prominent among his supporters was the celebrated critic Marco Boschini, with whom he formed a special bond of friendship. In Venice, Bellotti surrounded himself with a network of prestigious contacts, including the patron of the Accademia Delfica Giacomo Correr, the Spanish ambassador Antonio Sebastián de Toledo Molina y Salazar, the Medici art advisor Paolo Del Sera, and the Austrian representative Humprecht Jan Černín. Despite his high-quality production, almost exclusively commissioned by private patrons, documentation of his career is scarce, and his chronology and attribution remain the subject of uncertainties and debates that historiography still seeks to clarify today. Moreover, Bellotti’s work was not limited to Venice, although it was the beating heart of his activity; the artist also worked in Lombardy, between the Spanish Milan and the Gonzaga’s Mantua, in Bavaria, in the Rome of Pope Alexander VIII, and, most likely, in the Florence of the Medici.

Awe, reality, enigma: Pietro Bellotti and seventeenth-century painting on display in Venice

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