Capriccio with Ruins

The ruins in this picture never stood together anywhere. Pietro Bellotti, a Venetian who made his living in France, painted a capriccio, a view put together from invented and borrowed pieces of antiquity, and the museum dates it to about 1750.

It has a twin of the same size, dated 1750, which the Mauritshuis does not have on show. On a stone in that one the painter spelled out how he wished to be known, Bellotti dit Canaleti, Venetian, royal painter.

This canvas came from the Nationale Konst-Gallery, the national picture gallery the Batavian Republic opened in the palace of Huis ten Bosch in 1800, and it had passed to the Mauritshuis by 1823. It belongs to the Mauritshuis and hangs in its Gallery Prince Willem V on the Buitenhof in The Hague.