The Old Bridge over the Po, Turin

The bridge in this view had been patched up for almost 40 years. It linked the centre of Turin with the hill across the Po, and after the French siege of 1706 one of its piers collapsed in a flood, so a good part of the crossing was kept in use with timber carpentry. Bellotto painted it in 1745, during the same summer at the Savoy court that produced its companion, the view from the royal gardens.

The museum reads the picture as a contrast between high and low, courtly and popular. Up on the Monte stands the church of the Capuchins, still with its metal dome, which would be dismantled in 1801 to make cannonballs. Below it, out of the half-shadow, come the workaday streets of Borgo Po. Facing it, the left bank of the river has no embankment yet. A convent wall rises out of the high sand, and a group of washerwomen are busy bleaching linen.