Caspar van Wittel
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Caspar Adriaans van Wittel (also Gaspar, Gasparo degli Occhiali) (1653, Amersfoort - Sep 13, 1736, Rome) was a Dutch landscape painter.
Van Wittel learned painting in his hometown of Amersfoort and his first extant works awere made in Hoorn in 1672, but he relocated to Rome with his family ca. 1675 and made his career there. In Amersfoort, he likely was exposed to Dutch landscape artists such as Jan van der Heyden and Gerrit Berckheyde.
He married in Rome in 1697, and stayed most of his life in that city, though between 1694 and 1710 he toured Italy and painted in places like Florence, Bologna, Ferrara, Venice, Milan, Piacenza and Naples. He is one of the principal painters of topographical views known as vedute. His son Luigi would become a famous architect and also carries the italianized family name of Vanvitelli.
In Luigi's biography is written that his father was born in July 1656, but Van Wittel's grave in Rome states that he died at the age of 83 in 1736.
[edit] Partial Anthology
- Web gallery of art
- Vedute of Naples and Rome [1] including:
- Trinita dei Monte
- Villa Medici
- Porta Pinciana
- Piazza del Popolo
- Walls of Rome on the banks of the Tiber
- Ponte Sisto
[edit] References
- Review of Gaspar Van Wittel, e l'origene della veduta settecentesca (Rome) Ugo Bozzi publishers, by William Barcham in The Art Bulletin (1969) pp.189-193. [2]
