The Darsena, Naples(Gaspar van Wittel called Vanvitelli)
GASPAR VAN WITTEL, called VANVITELLI
1652/53 Amersfoort – Rome 1736
The Dutchman Gaspar Van Wittel was the first painter to make a speciality of vedute painting and to popularise the genre which in settecento Venice created the vogue for paintings firstly by Carlevaris and then later by Canaletto and Bellotto. Van Wittel probably arrived in Rome in the Jubilee year of 1675. He settled in the city until his death, but made short trips to Florence, Bologna and Venice, culminating in a two year stay in Naples. He was an apprentice to Mathias Withoos, a painter of landscapes and woodland scenes and the occasional view of a city. The first dated work by Gaspar Van Wittel is a View of Piazza del Popolo (Berlin, Staatliche Museum), dated 1680, while the last is a View of Ponte di Augusto in the Colonna Collection of 1732. In Rome he painted mainly topographical views as well as capriccii (called vedute ideate) for many important collectors but the Colonna princes were certainly his major clients. At the end of the Settecento, their collection contained more than one hundred works of the master: views of their land around Rome, views of Venice, Naples, Rome, Florence, Vaprio dAdda, Le Isole Borromee and not least the capriccii. Beside the Colonna one of the major collectors of Van Wittel was the Viceroy of Naples, the Duke of Medinaceli who had invited Van Wittel and his family to work for him in Naples in 1699. In the following two years the artist painted around thirty-five views for the Spanish nobleman.
The most famous of his sons, Luigi Vanvitelli, the architect of Reggia di Caserta, was born in Naples. English and French travellers passing through Rome purchased works directly from Gaspar Van Wittel and it is these paintings that are conserved in their original collections as in the case of the Earl of Leicester at Holkham Hall. Van Wittel may be said to have set the Settecento fashion for English travellers to buy views of the city that they visited while on their Grand Tour in Italy.
Caracciolo, Princes of Avellino
G.Briganti – Gaspar van Wittel, 1996 no 346