GASPAR VAN WITTEL, CALLED VANVITELLI | VIEW OF TIVOLI WITH THE OLD WATERFALL AND LEFT BANK OF THE RIVER ANIENE

Julius Boehler, Munich; 

Sale, Lucerne, Fischer, 25 August 1932, no. 167;

Private collection, central Switzerland;

By whom sold, Lucerne, Gallery Gloggner, 22 September 2018, lot 7;

There acquired.

W. Bernt, Die Niederländischen Maler des 17. Jahrhunderts, vol. IV, Munich 1962, reproduced plate 318;

G. Briganti, Gaspar van Wittel, "il pittore di Roma moderna", Rome 1966, p. 230, no. 158, reproduced; 

W. Bernt, Die Niederländischen Maler und Zeichner des 17. Jahrhunderts, vol. 3, Munich 1980, no. 1499, reproduced;

G. Briganti, Gaspar van Wittel, Milan 1996, p. 228, no. 263, reproduced.

Vanvitelli trained in his native Netherlands with still-life painter Matthias Withoos, and relocated to Rome in 1674, where he was engaged in illustrating the project to make the Tiber navigable from Perugia to the Tyrrhenian Sea. He was one of the first painter of vedute in oil and counted Italian noble families among his patrons, and his brightly colored views would influence Canaletto, Guardi, Panini, and others. The present view was likely based on studies Vanvitelli made while traveling the environs of Rome; Tivoli is about 30 kilometers from the capital city. Here he looks onto the left bank of the Aniene in Tivoli from a viewpoint on the San Martino bridge. The pendant to this painting depicts Tivoli's Temple of Vesta, and was sold at Sotheby's London, 9 December 1987, lot 31.¹

On the far left, the Via Valeria leads to the belfry of the church of Santa Maria del Ponte. The waterfall at center appears as it did before the Aniene, a feeder to the Tiber, was rerouted in 1834. Along the left bank of the river, townspeople do chores and stop to chat on multiple levels of the steep paths winding through town. Tivoli became a destination for tourists and artists in the early modern period because of its picturesque ruins and waterfall, and Vanvitelli painted about 30 views of the town between 1691 and 1723.

1. See G. Briganti 1996 in Literature, cat. no. 243.