Gaspar van Wittel and a new point of view

In this hall, an important set of vedutas of Naples and the surrounding countryside is exhibited; the works date back to the eighteenth and nineteenth century and include paintings by van Wittel and Pitloo.
The Veduta del Largo di Palazzo by Gaspar van Wittel, the most notable work of this section, is dated precisely at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and shows a new attitude to the representation of the city with respect to the previous period: unlike what happened in Rome or Venice, it had been the cartographic representation which had dictated the points of view for the paintings of the school of vedutismo. Now there is no more a frontal view of the long façade of the Royal Palace, but a view from a different and marked angle, which underscores the scenic role of the building in the great basin of the square, now called “of the Plebiscite”. The setting of the painting is in fact very different from what is now visible: at the end of the palace’s façade, one can in fact see in the painting the old seat of the Viceroy, built in 1533 by Pedro de Toledo and then demolished (1837), when the San Carlo Theatre was erected in its place. Moreover, the left side of the veduta reminds us of a series of ecclesiastical buildings which were replaced in the Neoclassical period by the compound of  St. Francis of Paula, with long wings that surrounded the church and the piazza.

Related topics:
» The Hall of the Birds and the section of the vedutas