Hand-painted in oil
About this Artwork
A trade, not a name
The title names an occupation instead of a person: a hussar, which is to say a light cavalryman. In this catalogue that shifts the picture out of portraiture-of-rank and into a different category, the mounted figure as a type. The horse's function follows the type. A cavalry mount is kept for speed and endurance in the field, and a picture of one is showing an arm of service rather than a sitter.
What the record holds
The date of creation is 1773 and the location is the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The dimensions are not recorded. The record gives Rococo as the style term, Italian as the nationality, and brown as the measured colour family of the image. The record files the work under male portraiture, Animal Art > Horse and, less obviously, under a religious heading.
An odd tag, left visible
Nothing in the title supports the religious heading, and this entry does not invent a reason for it. Category strings here are inherited from the source and carry the source's errors with them. Where one does not fit, the practice on this site is to say so rather than to argue it into place.
Sources
5 references- Bernardo Bellotto — Wikipedia
Bernardo Bellotto (c. 1721/1722 or 30 January 1721 – 17 November 1780), was an Italian urban landscape painter or vedutista, and printmaker in etching, famous for his vedute of European cities – Dresden, Vienna, Turin, and Warsaw. He was th
- Bellotto, Bernardo — Getty ULAN
Italian painter and draftsman, 1721-1780
- Equestrian Portrait of a Hussar Officer — Wikidata
description: painting by Bernardo Bellotto (Kunsthistorisches Museum); inception: 1773-01-01; dimensions: +73.5 × +65.5 cm; collection: Kunsthistorisches Museum
- bilddatenbank.khm.at — record for "Equestrian Portrait of a Hussar Officer"
Primary source record for this work (bilddatenbank.khm.at).
- khm.at — record for "Equestrian Portrait of a Hussar Officer"
Primary source record for this work (khm.at).
