Gaspar van Wittel, called Vanvitelli

Héli de Talleyrand-Périgord, Duc de Talleyrand, Paris;
By whom sold, Paris, Christie's, 26 November 2005, lot 285, where acquired.

Rome, Fondazione Museo Roma, Roma e l'Antico, Visione e realtà nel '700, 30 November 2010 - 6 March 2011, no. I.1.

G. Briganti, (L. Laureati and L. Trezzani eds.), Gaspar Van Wittel, Milan 1996, p. 168, cat. no. 98, reproduced;
C. Brook and V. Curzi (eds.), Roma e l'Antico, Visione e realtà nel '700, exhibition catalogue, Milan 2010, pp. 384, cat. no. I.1, reproduced in color p. 241.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This work has been restored. The stretcher is old and may be original. The lining is old and good. The surface is good. Under ultraviolet light, one can see retouching in spots throughout the sky, with three larger restorations in the upper right addressing actual paint losses. There is a fairly consistent group of retouches above the trees in the upper left and on the upper left edge, and the retouches become slightly more numerous beneath the trees on the left. In the darker colors of the foreground and in all of the architecture, there are barely any retouches. There is a spot or two in the Castel Sant'Angelo, but the remainder are along the bottom edge in the darkest colors. The work should be hung as is.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

The Castel Sant'Angelo, one of the highlights of Rome for Grand Tourists and modern-day visitors alike, was built by the Emperor Hadrian as a mausoleum for himself and his family in the second century AD. Beginning in the thirteenth century, successive popes added to the structure and turned it into the fortified castle and prison that we see in the picture and that still stands today. Pope Nicolas III connected the castle to Saint Peter's Basilica and the Vatican by a fortified tunnel known as il Passetto di Borgo, the beginning of which can be seen to the right of the composition. It saved many popes from attacks both from native Romans and foreign troops, including those of Charles V during the sack of Rome in 1527. The structure became known as the Castel Sant'Angelo after the reported appearance at the top of the castle by the Archangel Michael unsheathing his sword as a sign to mark the end of the plague of 590 AD. The statue of the angel, which can be made out in the present work, is still in place today.

The Prati di Castello, which in Italian means fields or meadows of the castle, is today an affluent and built-up district. As the present picture shows though, around 1700 it was still an area of open countryside. Located immediately to the north and north-east of the Vatican, the Prati were a favorite sketching ground for Vanvitelli and a location from which he produced numerous compositions, among them several views of Saint Peter's, as well as five variants of the present view. 

The painting is one of six versions of this view painted by the artist, all of which are thought to derive from a lost drawing. The present view is mostly topographically correct. In the skyline many of Rome's most notable edifices can be made out: the cupolas of the churches of il Gesù, of Sant'Ivo, Sant'Agnese, Sant'Andrea della Valle and San Carlo ai Catinari. To the right of the Castle the raised church of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini and the Gianicolo Hill stand out.