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Bernardo Bellotto, printmaker

The Generous Turk, Pantomime Ballet performed in Vienna at the Court Theater, 1759

Description

Maker

Title

The Generous Turk, Pantomime Ballet performed in Vienna at the Court Theater

Year

1759

Medium

Etching on paper

Materials/Techniques

Materials

Supports

Dimensions

Plate: 46.5 x 62.1 cm (18 5/16 x 24 7/16 inches)

Signature / Inscription / Marks

In Plate--inscribed in LC:Le turc Genereux./Ballet Pantomime executé à Vienne sur le Teatre prés de la Cour le 26. April, 1758./ Presenté à S. exc. Mons le Comté de Durazzo, Conseiller intime actuel d

Type

Credit

Gift of G. Pierce Metcalf

Object Number

52.226

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

The Festive City

December 21, 2012 - July 14, 2013

In 1741, Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria commissioned an intimate new theater close to her Viennese palace. Here Bernardo Bellotto depicts a production on its stage and includes the composer, Joseph Starzer, seated at the harpsichord, and the director of the Imperial Theater, Count Giacomo Durazzo, standing in the box at right. On stage is the balletic production of The Generous Turk—the story of a Turk who released a prisoner to her lover—which was staged in honor of the
visit of the Turkish envoy to the Austrian court. Although it was a court theater, its productions were open to any paying person of any class, which encouraged the type of social mixing (and people watching) that we associate with festivals. Bellotto gives a sense for the social atmosphere by showing his spectators facing outward and conversing. Engaging in the spirit of theater and festival, he also plays provocatively with the layered worlds of fantasy and reality in the layered
perspectival scene.

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in the public domain (CC0 1.0). This object is The Generous Turk, Pantomime Ballet performed in Vienna at the Court Theater with the accession number of 52.226. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.