Gaspar van Wittel
Posilippo with the Palazzo Donna Anna (around 1700/1702)

Naples' location on a bay is breathtakingly beautiful. Vesuvius, which
borders the painting on the right, also contributes to the pictorial
image. At the same time, it poses a constant threat: Heaven and hell,
it is said, are close together in Naples.

The deep blue shining sea dominates these views and stand out from
the shaded villas. In front you can see the Palazzo Donn'Anna with its
empty windows; the magnificent building was never completed, the owner
died while it was being built. Nevertheless, the palazzo was the scene
of numerous amusements.

Magnificent gondolas populate the bay; one of the people who
commissioned the painting may emerge: the Spanish viceroy Don Luis
Francisco de la Cerda. The viceroys were the governors of the Spanish
king, who had ruled the Kingdom of Naples since the middle of the 15th
century.

De la Cerda ordered the picture, and more than 30 others, from the
Dutchman Gaspar van Wittel, known in Italian as Gaspare
Vanvitelli. You can tell that the painting is Dutch in its attention
to detail. Van Wittel presumably used a camera obscura, i.e. a pinhole
camera, to implement the extreme wide format of this view in all its
accuracy.

Warwickshire, Compton Verney Art Gallery