Gaspar van Wittel

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Gaspar van Wittel (born Caspar Adriaensz. van Wittel, later a.k.a. Gaspare Vanvitelli, Gasparo degli Occhiali) (1653 in Amersfoort – September 13, 1736 in Rome) was a Dutch landscape painter.

Van Wittel learned painting in his hometown of Amersfoort. His first extant works were 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:
  • Trinità dei Monti
  • Villa Medici
  • Porta Pinciana
  • Piazza del Popolo
  • Walls of Rome on the banks of the Tiber
  • Ponte Sisto

The Mark Wittels

[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]
• Institute for Art History entry on Van Wittel and references therein