Circle of Bernardo Bellotto

Circle of Bernardo Bellotto is how a museum labels a picture painted in Bellotto's lifetime, close to him and in his manner, by someone it cannot name. That hand might belong to a fellow painter who knew his work at first hand, or to a local artist who saw his views being made. Workshop of claims more, placing a picture in the master's own studio under his eye. Follower of claims less, and allows a painter who simply took up his style, perhaps a generation later.

Bellotto's own views of Florence come from a visit in 1740, when he was still in his teens. The Venetian connoisseur Anton Maria Zanetti and the Florentine collector Marquis Andrea Gerini brought him to the city to paint it in the new Venetian manner. Views of the Arno and its bridges stayed in demand with foreign visitors for decades, and the English painter Thomas Patch, who settled in Florence in 1755, painted many of them for British travellers.

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston uses this label for a view of the Arno with the Ponte Vecchio, and dates it no more closely than 1740 to 1780.