The Man Before Canaletto

Piazza Navona, Rome 1699

Caspar van Wittel was a Dutch veduta painter born on 1653 in Amersfoort, a medieval city in central Netherlands. He lived most of his life in Italy, specifically in Rome— becoming a member of the Accademia di San Luca— although he travelled all over the country. Wittel is considered among the very first to spur the veduta genre, even before Canaletto and Panini, making detailed studies from nature and pioneering the format we know today as the panorama, or wide-view of scenery. Affectionately known in his day as Gaspare degli Occhiali, (Caspar of the Eyeglasses) his views of the Italian countryside combined with beautiful architecture with local figures helped forge a rich , seductive genre that would have an immense impact on landscape art.

In Piazza Navona above, (painted when Canaletto was about two years old) Wittel offers us a view that, even though we know it well to this day, here it still appears fresh and interesting to us. The contrast of warm sunshine with cool shadows in perspective, sharp detail in the architecture, and a myriad of figures scattered across the piazza from foreground to background, creates a real sense of space and presence. Wittel's figures are not stiff or posed, as in some veduta paintings, but are real people going about their daily lives—it is the closest record we have of life in this incredible period. Note the food sellers along the center and right-hand side of the composition. I love how the vanishing point in this one-point perspective leads the eye upward to sparse white clouds, also in perspective, contrasting with the darker, almost imperceptible clouds to the left behind the church of Sant'Agnese in Agone.

Castel Sant'Angelo from the South, ca. 1695

This verdant view of Rome has a surreal quality to it, almost Egyptian, revealing trees and a view of the Tiber that appears quaint and small to our modern eyes. It has the sense that we are looking at this view from the balcony or roof of a house of a friend or family member, not a formal veduta. We also get the real presence of fresh air, without cars or streets nearby, and architecture that is still clean and unpolluted. It is unclear what the figures on the wooden barge are transporting, besides livestock. Note how the foreground figures are relaxed and enjoying the view.

The Villa Medici and Garden in Rome, 1685

Note this predominantly cool palette Wittel uses, save for a line of warm-toned trees dividing the right-hand composition. Here the figures predominate the painting, contrasting active with stationary figures. Look at how he subdivides the composition with a horizontal shadow line, placing the foreground active figures in shadow. This was a keen mind of acute visual perception. And someone who dearly loved being in Italy.

View of the Arch of Titus, ca.1710

Wittel portrays a few people walking along a path once inhabited by the mighty Roman empire, yet these figures seem completely oblivious to it. Wittel seems to be commenting on the universality of social status and how identity is based on being seen and how you are perceived in public, rather than considering the relevance of the past and how it shapes who we are. Wittel bathes these figures in a warm sunlight surrounded by trees, as if to suggest that nature will prevail over power, nothing manmade can last forever. People will prevail in the end. Wittel was more than a veduta painter, he was a someone who saw beyond the veduta.

Orazio Riminaldi

Samson defeats Philistines, 1625 A painter from Pisa, Orazio Riminaldi was a Baroque tenebrist born in 1586 on September 5th. Riminaldi was unfortunately one of many painters who died young, in his case from the plague in 1630, but it is what he accomplished in those brief years that merits attention. Riminaldi's expressive faces and body language, along with superb skin tones and dramatic skies, take his art to a deeper level than some his contemporaries, who were perhaps more cautious in their techniques. Look at the fury of the scene above. It is quite rare in painting to see a pile of bodies with a warrior like Samson no less, stepping on top of one while grabbing the hair of another. And yet Riminaldi manages to make it look majestic and noble. The anatomy of the figures shows foreshortening combined with Caravaggio's chiaroscuro in a tight yet carefully arranged composition. By making it vertical, in a triangular design, it heightens the sense of drama while requi...

Bouguereau

Nymphs and Satyr, 1873 If there is one artist today that hardly needs an introduction, it would be William-Adolphe Bouguereau , supreme giant of 19th century Academic art. Born on November 30, 1825 in La Rochelle on the southwest of France, his talent would define the era he lived in only to fall into obscurity for decades after his death in 1905 until as recent as the early 1980's, shockingly. Today he has the distinction of being lionized by the Art Renewal Center as one of the greatest artists of all time while at the other end of the spectrum vilified by modernists as artificially perfect and sentimental. In fact it is quite rare to see such polarization over an artist of a calibre like Bouguereau, whose bravura is difficult to equal yet at the same time thematically his work admittedly tends toward women and children, a subject matter that sold well and he had endless patience for. Over the vast array of his oeuvre, some 820 paintings, I have tried to fi...

Carl Holsøe, Master of Rooms

The Artist's Wife sitting at a Window in a sunlit Room, ca.1900 Carl Vilhelm Holsøe was born on the 12 of March, 1863 in northeast Denmark. Holsøe studied in Copenhagen and under the Danish Master Peder Krøyer . Unlike many painters who worked outdoors and favored the majestic landscapes of their environment, Holsøe chose the psychological mood of the domestic interior and the way light spills into rooms. Although Holsøe is often compared to his contemporary and friend, Vilhelm Hammershøi , Holsøe is more authentic and less vacant emotionally. His use of sunlight captures the mindfulness of the moment in a way that is reminiscent of Dutch Masters, utilizing the power of quiet and reading as emotionally satisfying and tranquil. In the painting above, his wife sits in a kitchen chair looking out the window. On the table are cups of tea and a teapot that Holsøe gently lights the rims. The drapes are of a texture so thick it almost seems like pastel. Look at the greenish reflect...

beside the easel

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