(Bergamo circa 1604–1670 Rome)
An architectural capriccio with the Plague of Ashdod; and
An architectural capriccio with the Massacre of the Innocents,
the first indistinctly monogrammed, inscribed and dated: …C ROMA 166.,
oil on canvas, each 119 x 171 cm, framed, a pair

Provenance:
Donà dalle Rose collection, Venice;
Private European collection;
where acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to David Marshall for confirming the attribution of the present paintings on the basis of high resolution digital photographs.

Viviano Codazzi was among the most important view painters of the seventeenth century. He was born in Bergamo and he settled in Naples, possibly after a first stay in Rome where he is documented in 1634. Codazzi trained with Cosimo Fanzago while his collaboration with Domenico Gargiulo became of considerable import. In this relationship Codazzi would supply the architectural perspectives and the landscapes with ruins while the latter would paint the figures. At Naples, Codazzi did not limit himself to making easel paintings of landscape, rather he also played an important role as a painter of architectural perspectives, or as a quadraturista, on a grand scale: indeed, during the 1640s he collaborated on the Piscina Probatica or Healing Pool by Giovanni Lanfranco in the church of Santi Apostoli wherein he supplied the monumental architecture, modelled on the Roman examples of Tassi, but stylised by decidedly heightened effects of grandeur. Moreover, working in fresco he painted parts of the architectural setting of the ceiling of the Stanzione in San Paolo Maggiore completed in 1644, while other paintings by Codazzi are preserved in the Certosa di San Martino where he worked for many years.

If on the one hand Codazzi followed the course of Renaissance perspective painting, perhaps initially engaged in his native city through Ottavio Viviani, on the other, he was influenced by the realist landscape painting developed in the ambit of the northern painters called bamboccianti. Indeed, Codazzi devised and developed a genre that was based on the rendering of geometrically precise views of architecture or ruins, with dramatic lighting effects, while exhibiting a particular interest in rendering details from the everyday life of the people. Codazzi pioneered the transition from architectural and perspectival painting to a quality of realism derived in the wake of Caravaggio.

Codazzi probably moved to Rome in 1648 and here he not only produced the present pair of paintings, but also the celebrated series of ruin pieces in the Spada and Pallavicini collections as well as the Arch of Titus in the Museo di Roma. At this time he collaborated with various
painters including Michelangelo Cerquozzi, Jan Miel and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione called il Grechetto. Many works from his prolific output were in among the oldest and most prestigious Roman collections, indeed the Chigi, for example, owned many of his paintings while in the
1783 inventory of the Colonna we learn that there were no less than seventeen paintings by Codazzi in their collection. Codazzi’s style during this Roman period differed significantly from that of the earlier Neapolitan
period: these works deploy a different tonal range imparting a new atmosphere characterised by a more classicising and monumental quality.
The present paintings can be compared to Viviano Codazzi’s Architectural capriccio with the Massage of the Innocents in the Alte Pinakotheck, Munich (inv. no. 2728).