Gaspar van Wittel

Gaspar van Wittel (Italianized as Gaspare Vanvitelli, 1652/53–1736) was a Dutch-born painter who spent his career in Rome and Naples and is recognized as the founder of Italian vedutismo — the topographically precise city view that became one of the great eighteenth-century Italian genres. Trained in Amersfoort and Utrecht, Van Wittel arrived in Rome around 1675 and produced hundreds of luminous vedute of Rome, Venice, Naples, Florence, and the Campania for an international clientele of Grand Tour patrons. His son Luigi Vanvitelli became one of the most important Italian Rococo architects, designer of the Royal Palace of Caserta.

Van Wittel painted with a clear, balanced compositional sense, restrained palette of cool grays and warm ochres, careful handling of architecture and perspective, and broad observation of light. His vedute place small figures and boats in expansive urban-topographic frames.

Van Wittel founded the tradition of Italian topographic vedutismo that Canaletto, Bellotto, Panini, and Guardi would carry to its eighteenth-century summit. His vedute set the visual template for the Grand Tour painted souvenir.