Dresden from the Right Bank of the Elbe above the Augustus Bridge

Bellotto arrived in Dresden in 1747 at the invitation of Augustus III, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, and this is the first view of the city he painted there. He looks across the Elbe from the right bank. On the far side, below the dome of the Frauenkirche, runs a row of buildings that belonged to the king's chief minister, Count Heinrich von Brühl: his picture gallery, his library, a garden pavilion and his palace, all set on the old fortifications along the river. Further on, the Augustus Bridge crosses the water.

The foreground is a small portrait of the court. Bellotto has put himself on a stone in the middle, with his drawing things, talking to Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich and Johann Alexander Thiele, two painters already in the court's service. Close by stands the opera singer Nicolò Pozzi, seen from behind, and a little apart, with only a small dog beside him, the court jester Joseph Fröhlich in his bright costume. Bellotto's signature, with the year and the words "in Dresda", is painted on a block of stone at the lower right.