Di Fremmy©
Van Wittel – La Darsena (Wikipedia)
Caspar Van Wittel has been working mainly in Rome and Naples and he depicted a lot of different landscapes named “Views of…” which definition has been given to a view of a particular spot that he loved to show in his artworks.
I have been sitting and admiring this peculiar painting “La Darsena delle Galere” (1797) which is quite famous and now belongs to a private collection in England.
I feel attracted by the colours and the view of the Castle from the hill with a well detailed atmospheric perspective depicting an unusual cloudy sky over Naples.
The Dutch painter has followed the Italian inspiration of landscapes and I particularly feel interesting the crowd in a quiet market over the port as well I do like the tonal values and the skyline on the background.
This is a typical example of perspective with foreground, middle ground and background with a lot of details and human figures which makes the whole scenario quite various and really dense.
The buildings on the right background are extended towards the clouds and they represent to me a well and remarkable memory of the past which features my birthplace town as one of the most important places for the visual arts throughout the 17th and 18th Century hosting and giving birth to some of the most prestigious painters of the time as Ribera, Salvador Rosa, Caravaggio.
Vessels in the port and awesome sightseeing, with a moment of the busy town depicted as the trading and some aristocratic places looked after by the Castle on the hill along with the traditional architecture of some building looking at the harbour, they all are a well depicted example of a middle ground layer.
Finally I want to highlight my point of view over the yellow and blue which are blended through purple and other light tones as quite as representing a town which is mostly sunny although that particular moment of the day some clouds showed and the artist still wanted to give as most yellow colour as possible to fill the absence of the really bright daylight whether the sun was hiding behind the clouds giving a dark value to the sea. I feel that is one of the other uncommon sides of a such interesting town of the past.
https://myocablog.wordpress.com/2018/04/10/vanvitelli-la-darsena-delle-galere/
https://antichecuriosita.co.uk/manifesto-destrutturalista-contro-comune-buonsenso/
