ROMAN PAINTER
18th century

Capriccio is a term coined at the end of the Renaissance and, according to dictionaries, has two different meanings with one point in common. 'Capriccio' was a movement of the soul, or more precisely a sudden excitement of the imaginative faculty that gave rise to every variety of mental images, but from a pictorial point of view there is no doubt that the genre developed in Rome during the early decades of the 17th century and found inspiration thanks to the ruins of the classical age. If the antecedents are found in the works of Viviano Codazzi and Giovanni Ghisolfi, there is no doubt that it was Giovanni Paolo Pannini who ennobled the genre, with an extraordinary landscape and archaeological propensity that influenced all the artists of the eighteenth century and especially those active in Rome and in Emilia. Among these was Raffaele Rinaldi and the composition in question for the brightness and the drafting finds comparison with his whims. It must also be said that the painter's activity can be seen in the wake of the Emilian quadraturists and scenographers, without forgetting the Roman stay which is in the seventh decade. Documents also attest to this in Venice and Germany, thus suggesting an activity as a theatrical scenographer as was Antonio Joli and almost all the landscape painters of the time.