BARBERINI PALACE - NATIONAL ART GALLERY (twenty-third part)

Room XXX - Landscapes and Views

Views of Rome including “Quirinal Square”, “Walk of Villa Medici” 1683, “Church of Trinità dei Monti” 1683 and “View of the Broken Bridge at Ripa Grande” 1685 by Gaspar van Wittel (1653/1736)

He was a Dutch painter naturalized Italian, known also as Gaspare Vanvitelli or Gaspare degli occhiali (Caspar with glasses)

He moved to Italy when he was twenty and he became an unbeatable landscape artist who also liked to use technical devices such as the optical box

He was the father of the great painter and architect Luigi Vanvitelli (1700/73)

“The setting of the view doesn't focus on the reproduction of the monuments, but amazingly they are equated with the image of the city's daily life. The sharpness of the image, made more transparent by the technique of tempera on parchment, with a natural perspective, focuses on the reproduction of aspects of the city in the life of the inhabitants, without research for monumentality or for picturesque” (Lorenza Mochi Onori)

Four splendid views of Venice: “Piazza S. Marco and the Procuratie” about 1730, “Canal Grande” about 1737, “Rialto Bridge” about 1735 and “Small square with the Library of St. Mark” about 1737 by Giovanni Antonio Canal aka Canaletto (1697/1768)

“From his first work signed and dated, which is of 1723, the technique of Canaletto develops more and more towards a sharp clarity that sees the use, for the accuracy of perspective effects, of the system of the optical chamber, which was used to obtain the drawing of the contours of the view through the projection of the image. In the Rialto Bridge the bridge itself is not at the center of the scene and the protagonist is not the monument. It rather prevails a vivid description of daily life in Venice” (Lorenza Mochi Onori)

“View of imperial castle of Schlossof” about 1762 and “View of the Market Square in Dresden” about 1748 by Bernardo Bellotto (1721/80) who had his uncle Canaletto as master

He lived in Dresden, Vienna and Warsaw and he documented those cities almost photographically

“Venice, the church of St. George as seen from Giudecca Canal” about 1770 and “Architectural Capriccio with a pyramid, Roman ruins and figures” about 1775 by Francesco Guardi (1712/93)

“He began as a figure painter, and soon emerged with a production characterized by the interpretation of landscapes according to a sense closer to the atmospheric rendering. His views are not defined by the sharp lines of perspective of Canaletto, of whom, however, he used the engravings for his paintings, and Bellotto, but rather the city's image is filtered by the light and atmosphere of the lagoon” (Lorenza Mochi Onori)

“Landscape with figures” by the Flemish who settled in Rome Jan Frans Van Bloemen aka Orizzonte (1662/1749)

“Jan Frans, also known as Orizzonte (Horizon) to distinguish him from his older brother Pieter, also a painter and known as Stendardo (Banner), arrived in Rome in 1688 (...). The Arcadian vision of the landscape in Van Bloemen goes with the serenity of the Lazio region landscape while not forgetting the examples of the grandeur of Claude Lorrain (1600/82) and of the classical Gaspard Dughet (1615/75) his masters in Rome” (Lorenza Mochi Onori)

“Landscape with ruins and figures” by the Roman Andrea Locatelli (1693/1741)

“His painting harmonizes the elements taken from Gaspard Dughet, Claude Lorrain and Jan Frans van Bloemen aka Orizzonte in the Arcadian ideal of the eighteenth century through the careful rendering of the true and the use of a deep brightness” (Lorenza Mochi Onori)

“Landscape with figures and statue of the Tiber” about 1735, “Architectural Capriccio with the Borghese Gladiator”, “Capriccio with Roman ruins and the Pyramid of Cestius” about 1745 and “Capriccio with Roman ruins and the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius” about 1750 by Giovanni Paolo Pannini (1691/1765) from Piacenza who mixes the real and the imaginary ruins

“His creative originality was accompanied by a style maturation that moved from Benedetto Luti and Sebastiano Conca, with a gradual lightening of the palette and the achievement of a taste perfectly collimating with the French, as evidenced by the clear debts against him of famous painters such as Hubert Robert and Emile Jean Horace Vernet” (Giancarlo Sestieri)

“View of the Alban Hills and Ariccia” and “Waterfall of the Aniene River at Tivoli” 1769 by the German Jacob Philipp Hackert (1737/1807)

“For the French, in the wake of Pannini and of the landscape with ruins paintings, landscape has an essentially evocative meaning and does not represent a line of independent research with a direct focus on natural reality. Hackert's work has an Enlightenment dimension which shines in its technique, in the subtle signs with which he circumscribes areas, to enhance the sharpness of the natural effects” (Lorenza Mochi Onori)