Canaletto [antikvár]

In earty 1945 Warsaw was one vast ruin. But, owing to the heroic effort and self-sacrifice of the whole nation, a new Warsaw, the capital of People's Poland, has been raised where ruins and cinders had been left. New monumental layouts and new imposing buildings have grown. According, however, to the intentions of those who have restored Warsaw to a new life it is not to be a fundamentally new city. It is to have somé connexion with all that was great and beautiful in its tradition. A decision was taken, therefore, to rebuild and make an essential part of new Warsaw all that, growing for centuries, shaped its physiognomy full of peculiar charm. That is why historic palaces, citizens' houses, and churches — even whole quarters of the city — are being restored with infinite love and care. Artists and engineers, artizans and workers raising at present the new Warsaw have been assisted in the restoration of many a building, even of many an architectonic detail, by the pictures of Bernardo Belotto, called Canaletto the younger, a court painter to the last King of Poland Stanislaw August, who — unmatched in fidelity and precision—recorded the features of Warsaw at the time when it was becoming one of the most beautiful towns of Northern Europe. The pictures are a store of knowledge about the XVIII century Warsaw. They possess the value of a document. They are a mine of information for the histórián of architecture, town-planning, and landscape gardening and for the student of costumes and manners. Owing to the unrivalled fidelity and exactitude of representa-tion they help us, as it has been already said, in raising up from ashes many a beautiful building of the old Warsaw in its originál form. Canaletto's views of Warsaw, however, are not merely valuable records. They are works of art of no mean stature. We are fascinated by their suggestive rendering of the picturesque situation of Warsaw. We admire in them the precision of drawing and the masterly control of the perspective, a skilful choice of the point of view, motive, or fragment, a fine feeling for style and beauty of buildings, for their volume, arrangement of parts, relief, colour, and fabric. We are grateful to the artist for the inexhaustible wealth of detail in lively Street scenes, for which he had such a keen eye, and for the liberality with which — omitting no class — he presented so detailed a picture of the Polish society of the XVIII century. Canaletto caught Warsaw, its architecture, and its life at one of the most dynamic moments in the history of the city, when capitalist economy started developing in Poland, when Warsaw, having become the permanent residence of the king and seat of the central authorities, was quickly expanding, when its popula-tion was speedily growing, its handicraft, industry, and trade were flourishing and when the city was becoming a seat of learning and art; when — in short — Warsaw was about to turn into a big modern city. Moreover, Canaletto has caught and shown, by no means conventionally, Warsaw éntering a new period that was to bring about far-reaching changes in the future of the Polish nation. The city he made immortal was the Warsaw of the Age of Enlightenment, the period then open-