Caspar van Wittel or Gaspar van Wittel (; born Jasper Adriaensz van Wittel; 1652 or 1653 – 13 September 1736), known in Italian as Gaspare Vanvitelli () or (), was a Dutch painter and draughtsman who had a long career in Rome, Papal States. He played a pivotal role in the development of the genre of topographical painting known as veduta. He is credited with turning topography into a painterly specialism in Italian art.
Life
Van Wittel was born into a Roman Catholic family in Amersfoort. His father was a cart maker.
thumb|left|300px|Piazza Navona, Rome
His first extant works were made in Hoorn in 1672 to where he had fled after the French invasion and occupation of Amersfoort in the Rampjaar. He returned to Amersfoort where he was active until 1674, the year in which he left for Italy together with his friend Jacob van Staverden, another pupil of Withoos.
Like his former teacher Withoos, he joined the Bentvueghels, an association of mainly Dutch and Flemish artists working in Rome. His nickname in the Bentveughels was "Piktoors" (Pitch-torch) or "Toorts van Amersfoort" (Torch of Amersfoort). He was also nicknamed ‘Gasparo dagli Occhiali’ (Gaspare with the spectacles).
thumb|300px|View of the Tiber in Rome
In 1697 van Wittel married Anna Lorenzani. His first son Luigi was born in 1700. Luigi became a famous architect and used the italianized family name of Vanvitelli. A second son was born in 1702.
Van Wittel spent almost all his life in Italy where he arrived in 1674 and died in 1736. He lived mainly in Rome but, particularly between 1694 and 1710, he also toured the country and painted in Florence, Bologna, Ferrara, Venice, Milan, Piacenza, Urbino, and Naples. He became member of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome in 1711. He made his last dated work in 1730. He is also considered to have influenced one of the major Italian vedutisti, the Venetian painter Canaletto. Some of the views he painted during his visit to Venice around 1697 anticipate Canaletto in their perspective layout and in the angle in which the scene is presented. An example is the View of the Piazzetta from St Mark's Basin (Doria Pamphilj Gallery, Rome). His first vedute also originated from his collaboration with Meyer, who used drawings by van Wittel to illustrate one of his tracts with a series of engraved Roman views. Van Wittel used some of these drawings for tempera and oil vedute dating from the early 1680s. His style of vedute was formed about 10 years later. His work was very popular with travellers on their Grand Tour of Italy. Thomas Coke, the future 1st Earl of Leicester and builder of Holkham Hall, Norfolk, acquired at least seven vedute by van Wittel during his Grand Tour in the years 1715 and 1716.
References
thumb|300px|The navigable Tiber by Caspar van Wittel and Cornelis Meyer
Further reading
- 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.