Attributed to Viviano Codazzi

Attributed to VIVIANO CODAZZI (Italy, 1604/06 - 1670).
"Capriccio".
Oil on canvas.
Relined.
It presents an old restoration and some losses.
The frame presents faults in the gilding.
Measurements: 100 x 126 cm; 110 x 136 cm (frame).

Painting of Italian school and Baroque period attributed to Viviano Codazzi. The pictorial quality and the theme of the ruins sublimated by means of architectural fantasies leads the experts to deduce the authorship of this great Italian painter. Under a sky covered with wind-laden clouds, a ruinous architecture that condenses attributes of different Greco-Roman temples, of which only the memory and the annotation of some traveler remained, is cut out imposingly. The tall Corinthian columns are eaten away by age and the scars of war. The statues have lost their heads or limbs, and moss grows in every crevice. The lives of the human groups scattered between the lagoon and the porticoes are relaxed. Their clothing is typical of the period to which the painter belongs. The quality of the backlighting and the right chromatic ranges that enhance the architectural beauty and its mystery stand out.

Italian Baroque painter born in Valdassina, near Bergamo, Viviano Codazzi specialized in the painting of architecture, covering various genres such as the "quadratura" (decorative genre derived from trompe l'oeil), the painting of ruins or the "capricci", although he also painted several "vedute". He is in fact recognized today as one of the first painters of "vedute", both in its fantastic and realistic aspects, and in fact his work will exert a notable influence on Canaletto and Bernardo Bellotto. He developed a personal language that, in contrast to the heroic character of the landscape derived from the Carracci, imaginatively interprets buildings and ruins, but always respecting verisimilitude, playing with lighting to obtain typically baroque expressive effects, which enhance the appearance of the ancient-looking buildings, populated by small popular characters. Codazzi grew up in Rome, where his family moved to in 1605, and as an adult he settled in Naples around 1633. There he trained as a disciple of Cosimo Fanzago, and his style matured, focusing on architectural painting. In Naples he worked on commissions such as those for the Certosa di San Martino, obtained through Cosimo Fanzago, also born in Bergamo. His major project in Naples was a series of four large canvases depicting scenes from Ancient Rome for the Buen Retiro Palace in Madrid, including one depicting gladiatorial combat in the Colosseum. Since he was a painter who specialized in architectural painting, the figures in this series were made by Domenico Gargiulo. In fact, this type of collaboration would be a constant in his career. Gargiulo was his main collaborator in Naples, but after returning to Rome following the Masaniello revolt in 1647, Codazzi will work with the Bamboccianti, mostly Dutch painters, and especially with Michelangelo Cerquozzi and Jan Miel. He also collaborated with Filippo Lauri, Adrien van der Cabel and Vicente Giner, already in the 1660s. The Bamboccianti, painters gathered around the figure of Pieter van Laer "Bamboccio", will exert a notable influence on Codazzi's mature style. He had several disciples and faithful followers, among them Ascanio Luciano and Andrea di Michele, in Naples, and also his son Niccolò Codazzi, Vicente Giner (who settled in Spain) and Domenico Roberti. Within his production it is worth mentioning for its originality his representation of the "Basilica of St. Peter" (1636), an unusual work within the genre of the "veduta". Painted in Naples, this painting shows the old entrance to the Vatican palace, destroyed when the Sala Regia and Bernini's colonnade were built, as well as two bell towers based on an engraving of the architect Martino Ferabosco's project, which was never built. One of his best known works is the representation of the Masaniello revolt in the Piazza del Mercato in Naples, with figures by Cerquozzi, which he made for Cardinal Bernardino Spada in 1648 (now in the Galleria Spada in Rome). Apart from these singular works, most of his paintings are medium format paintings, starring architectures in landscape settings. Works by Viviano Codazzi are currently held in the Museo del Prado, the Louvre, the Bowes Museum in County Durham (U.K.), the Indiana University Art Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Walters Art Museum, among other public and private collections.