GASPAR VAN WITTEL CALLED VANVITELLI (AMERSFOORT 1652/1653-1736 ROME)
GASPAR VAN WITTEL CALLED VANVITELLI (AMERSFOORT 1652/1653-1736 ROME)
GASPAR VAN WITTEL CALLED VANVITELLI (AMERSFOORT 1652/1653-1736 ROME)
GASPAR VAN WITTEL CALLED VANVITELLI (AMERSFOORT 1652/1653-1736 ROME)
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GASPAR VAN WITTEL CALLED VANVITELLI (AMERSFOORT 1652/1653-1736 ROME)

A view of the Tiber river looking North, with the Church of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini and Via Giulia, Rome

Details
GASPAR VAN WITTEL CALLED VANVITELLI (AMERSFOORT 1652/1653-1736 ROME)
A view of the Tiber river looking North, with the Church of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini and Via Giulia, Rome
signed and dated 'GASPARO VAN/WITEL 1713' (lower right, on a stone slab)
tempera on panel
26.5 x 47.6 cm (10 1/2 x 18 3/4 in.)
Provenance
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 2 July 1997, lot 52, when acquired by the present owner.
Literature
F. Benzi & C. Strinati, Gaspare Vanvitelli e le origini del vedutismo, exhib. cat., Roma, Chiostro del Bramante, 2002-2003 & Venezia, Museo Correr, 2003, p. 70 and under no. 33 (catalogue entry by L. Laureati).
Special notice
This lot is offered without reserve. This lot has been imported from outside of the UK for sale and placed under the Temporary Admission regime. Import VAT is payable at 5% on the hammer price. VAT at 20% will be added to the buyer’s premium but will not be shown separately on our invoice.

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Lot Essay

Born in Amersfoort, Vanvitelli was first documented as working in Rome from January 1675. His first commissions in Italy came through his affiliation with the Bentvueghels – the informal society of Dutch and Flemish painters active in Rome between 1620 and 1720. In 1676, the Dutch engineer Cornelis Meyer (1629-1701) commissioned the young artist to produce topographical drawings of the Tiber with a view to illustrate his project to improve navigation on the river for the purpose of increased commerce. With the help of Van Wittel, he published his ideas in a book entitled L’arte di restituire a Roma la tralasciata navigatione del suo Tevere in 1683.
While vedute of the Tiber are common in the late 1670/1680s in Vanvitelli’s artistic production, these had become rarer by the time the artist executed the present view in 1713 – as the clientele from the Grand Tour expanded, demand had shifted towards pictorial ricordi of celebrated monuments of the city such as Piazza Navona or the Basilica of St. Peter, and Vanvitelli altered his subject matter accordingly.
This comparatively rare view of the river, however, achieved immediate success and the artist produced no fewer than nine versions, all of high quality (cf. F. Benzi & C. Strinati, op. cit., under no. 33). Four versions were executed between 1713 and 1719, including the present work and another tempera on panel in the Museumslandschaft Hessen, Kassel (inv. GK 1018; see G. Briganti, Gaspar van Wittel, Milan, 1996, cat. 156, ill.). The Kassel view is also signed and dated 1713 and both versions came with a pendant depicting the Chiaia district in Naples, with Mergellina in the background (see Sotheby's, London, 2 July 1997, lot 53; and Kassel, inv. GK 1017, see Briganti, op. cit., no. 378, ill.), where the artist had spent some years between 1699 and 1702, and would often return.
The secular and modern genre of topographical cityscape was inherited by Vanvitelli from the likes of Jan van der Heyden (1637-1712) and Gerrit Berckheyde (1638-1698), active in the Netherlands, and transmitted to a later generation in the form of prints by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778). This riverscape displays an extraordinary degree of details in its depiction of the Via Giulia bordering on the Palazzo Sacchetti and the Church of San Biagio della Pagnotta; to the right appears the Farnesina. With this vivid depiction of the figures and their horses supplying grain to the watermill in the foreground, and those bathing in the river in the background, Vanvitelli demonstrates an unusual sense of the anecdotal. There is no known preparatory drawing for this composition.

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