View Of Rome With St. John Lateran, Italian school of the 18th century

Attributed to Giovanni Giacomo Van Lint (Rome 1723 - 1790)

View of Rome with the Basilica of St. John Lateran (for full details, click HERE)

Oil on canvas 50 x 62 cm - in frame 61 x 74 cm

The work belongs to a series of three paintings, together with views of the Trevi Fountain (link) and Piazza Navona .

This splendid view of Rome, depicting the Basilica of St. John Lateran and the adjacent Lateran Palace, is of excellent quality and is attributed to the Roman landscape painter Giovanni Giacomo Van Lint (Rome 1723 - 1790).

It is one of the iconic monuments of the Eternal City, the official ecclesiastical seat of the Pope and therefore considered the “mother of all churches in the world”. The monumental façade, designed by Alessandro Galilei in the 18th century, features statues of Christ (the central figure at the top of the façade), Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist, and the Doctors of the Church.

The view is characterised by its bright colours, with the light of the sun fading, instilling a delicate sense of chromatic tranquillity, a stylistic feature 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 the UK.

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.