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Wittel, Gaspar [Caspar] (Adriaansz.) van [Vanvitelli, Gaspare or Gasparo]
(b Amersfoort, 1652–3; d Rome, 13 Sept 1736). Dutch painter and draughtsman, active in Italy. After early training in Amersfoort in the workshop of Matthias Withoos, he went to Rome, where he is first recorded in 1675; known as Vanvitelli, he spent the rest of his life there apart from a few trips to northern Italy during the early 1690s, a stay in Naples from 1700 to 1701 and possibly other, undocumented, trips before c. 1730. He became one of the principal painters of topographical views known in Italy as vedute (see VEDUTA). His first recorded work in Rome comprises 50 drawings executed in 1675–6 (Rome, Bib. Accad. N. Lincei & Corsiniana, Cod. Corsiniana 1227), illustrating the plans by the hydraulic engineer Cornelis Meyer (1629–1701) to restore navigability to the River Tiber between Rome and Perugia. (Though generally accepted, the attribution of these drawings has been disputed by Zwollo.) Van Wittel’s first vedute were also collaborations with Meyer, who illustrated one of his tracts with a series of engraved Roman views (pubd 1683 and 1685), of which those depicting the Piazza del Popolo, the Piazza S Giovanni in Laterano and the Piazza S Pietro are taken from designs by van Wittel, probably executed in 1678 and repeatedly used by the artist from the early 1680s in tempera and oil paintings. Van Wittel’s first painted vedute date from 1680, and his style was established by the beginning of the 1690s. Even before 1690, in fact, he had elaborated his chosen compositional and perspectival principles: subsequently only the subject-matter changed.
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