This is the Island in the Tiber by Gaspar Adriaensz van Wittel (1647-1736) and there’s a romanticised serenity that might make someone forget the Tiber was, in reality, a rather murky and unpredictable river. Adriaensz has gone full atmospheric here with soft golden light, a gentle sky, calm waters and not a whiff of disease, sewage, or the occasional Roman mischief that the island would have actually witnessed. It’s a cityscape where everything behaves itself, the domes stand proud in the distance, the bridges look sturdy, and the locals potter about at the water’s edge like they’ve got all the time in the world. But there’s meant to be, and indeed is, some element of realism here as this is a veduta, or cityscape, and the artist was one of the first to paint in this style, no doubt inspiring later painters such as Canaletto. One of the biggest collectors of van Wittel’s works was Thomas Coke or Holkham Hall in Norfolk and there are still five of the paintings at the hall.
Assuming that my friend would come and organise this, would I have it on my wall? Definitely and not just because it’s likely worth quite a lot. It’s the perfect illusion as it’s Rome without the traffic, the chaos or the occasional whiff of the Tiber on a hot day. It’s really rather lovely, and a nice reminder that even in the seventeenth century, artists were basically curating the Instagram version of life.