the Flemish draughtsman Lieven Cruyl who had produced a series of cityscapes of Rome in the 1660s. He is also considered to have influenced one of the major Italian vedutisti, the Venetian painter Canaletto. Some of the views he painted during his visit to Venice around 1697 anticipate Canaletto in their perspective layout and in the angle in which the scene is presented. An example is the View of the Piazzetta from St Mark's Basin (Doria Pamphilj Gallery, Rome). When van Wittel first arrived in Rome he drew 50 drawings illustrating the Dutch hydraulic engineer Cornelis Meyer's designs for restoring navigability to the River Tiber between Rome and Perugia. His first vedute also originated from his collaboration with Meyer, who used drawings by van Wittel to illustrate one of his tracts with a series of engraved Roman views. Van Wittel used some of these drawings for tempera and oil vedute dating from the early 1680s. His style of vedute was formed about 10 years later. His work developed from that of the Dutch Italianate painters, whose work incorporated Roman ruins and other Roman sights. Their paintings always placed architecture within the surrounding landscape. Van Wittel's approach was derived from this and as result his views show buildings from a distance. He showed large architectural complexes in an overall view. His work should therefore be seen as a mixture of landscape and urban architecture painting rather than simple vedute. It is possible that he relied on the aid of a camera obscura in drawing his vedute. His compositional and perspectival principles remained the same from the 1690s, only the subject matter changed. His work was very popular with travellers on their Grand Tour of Italy. Thomas Coke, the future 1st Earl of Leicester and builder of Holkham Hall, Norfolk, acquired at least seven vedute by van Wittel during his Grand Tour in the years 1715 and 1716. References Further reading Review of Gaspar Van Wittel, e l'origene della veduta settecentesca (Rome) Ugo Bozzi publishers, by William Barcham in The Art Bulletin (1969) pp. 189–193. External links 1653 births 1736 deaths People from Amersfoort Dutch Golden Age painters 17th-century Italian painters Italian male painters 18th-century Italian painters Italian vedutisti Dutch landscape painters 18th-century Dutch painters 18th-century Dutch male artists Dutch male painters Members of the Bentvueghels 18th-century Italian male artists