View Of Rome With Piazza Navona Floode, Italy 18th century

Giovanni Giacomo Van Lint (Rome 1723 - 1790) Attributed

View of Rome with Piazza Navona flooded

Oil on canvas 50 x 62 cm - framed 61 x 74 cm

The work belongs to a series of three paintings, together with the views of the Trevi Fountain (lien) and St. John Lateran (link)

This splendid view of Rome, depicting the famous flooded Piazza Navona, is of excellent quality and is attributed to the Roman landscape painter Giovanni Giacomo Van Lint (Rome 1723 - 1790).

It is a very interesting historical document, immortalising one of the now obsolete summer traditions that have written the history of the Eternal City, namely the so-called “lake” in Piazza Navona. since 1652, by order of Pope Innocent X, every Saturday and Sunday in August, the square, thanks to its concave bottom, was flooded, creating a large swimming pool to cool nobles and commoners during the summer heat.

The view is characterised by its bright colours, with the light of the sun tending to fade, instilling a delicate sense of chromatic tranquillity, a stylistic aspect typical of the mature phase of our painter, who achieved a solid reputation as a landscape painter by depicting the city of Rome with topographical accuracy.

The painting, in particular, is derived from an engraving by the famous Giuseppe Vasi (Corleone 1710 - Rome 1782), taken from the monumental collection entitled “Delle magnificenze di Roma antica e moderna” (The Magnificence of Ancient and Modern Rome), featuring the most beautiful views of the Eternal City, which ensured him great fame, thanks above all to the always original and prospectively captivating style of his compositions and his never predictable choice of subjects.

Giuseppe Vasi, who reveals the fullness of his graphic creativity in this monumental work, became an important point of reference for landscape painters working in Rome: it was customary for artists of the time to refer to his prints - as was the case in Venice with Visentini's engravings - in order to create accurate iconographies of places.

Views such as ours, in particular, were created by Giovanni Giacomo Van Lint to satisfy collectors and refined travellers, especially English, German and French, who visited the city during their “Voyage d'Italie”, eager to possess a “souvenir” image of Rome in its most relaxed and characteristic dimension.

For this reason, he became a much-admired painter and was very successful among foreigners visiting Rome, who bought up small-scale views and landscapes that were easier to transport, so much so that almost all of his paintings are now in private European collections, particularly in England.

Reference bibliography: A. Busiri Vici, 'Peter, Hendrik and Giacomo Van Lint. Three painters from Antwerp in the 17th and 18th centuries working in Rome', Bozzi publisher, Rome 1987.