Maestro van Wittel-Dutch master of the Italian cityscape.

Kunsthal KAdE and Museum Flehite invite you to the exhibition Maestro Van Wittel, Dutch master of the Italian cityscape, from Saturday 26 January 2019. With this exhibition, both institutions reintroduce the Netherlands to a world-famous Dutch master who nevertheless remained unknown to many in his home country. At the invitation of Kunsthal KAdE, Hans Wilschut follows in the painter’s footsteps. In search of the locations and the meaning of his cityscapes, he creates contemporary photographic interpretations of the original works.

Caspar Adriaensz. van Wittel (1653–1736), or Gaspare Vanvitelli, was celebrated and honoured in his second homeland, Italy. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries he painted Rome, Naples, and Venice down to the smallest detail, influencing renowned Italian cityscape painters such as Canaletto and Bellotto. Van Wittel was born in Amersfoort, left for Italy around 1673, built his reputation there, and never returned to his native country. Today, the vast majority of his oeuvre is held in Italian, English, and Spanish collections. In the Netherlands, only a few drawings and one gouache remain: View of Amersfoort in Museum Flehite. With the exhibition Maestro Van Wittel – Dutch Master of the Italian Cityscape, Museum Flehite and Kunsthal KAdE honour this master, still largely unknown in the Netherlands, with a major retrospective from 26 January to 5 May. The exhibition places his extensive body of work in the context of his Dutch formative years and his influence on later Italian vedutisti.

The exhibition at Kunsthal KAdE presents the full story of Van Wittel: the places he painted, the style he developed, his Dutch roots, his aristocratic patrons, and his unmistakable influence in Italy. With this retrospective, Museum Flehite and Kunsthal KAdE aim to give Caspar van Wittel, Gaspare Vanvitelli, his place in the canon of Dutch art history, as a maestro of the Italian cityscape.

Alongside his distinctive perspective, Van Wittel is known for his precision in depicting architecture, his representation of the “new” city, and his attention to the figures that populate his street scenes. These are qualities Hans Wilschut also identifies in his own work. “In my photographic work, I focus on the city as an architectural and social space, and on the tension between the two. Within that, I address themes such as globalisation, migration, urbanisation, and the world economy. I capture fleeting life not by photographing the actors in that grand theatre, but the stage set,” he says.

These similarities and differences make it compelling to compare then and now. In the exhibition, Wilschut’s photographic works are shown among Van Wittel’s paintings, as contemporary vedute.

26 January – 5 May 2019 

kunsthal KAdE
Eemplein 77 (Eemhuis)
3812 EA Amersfoort
The Netherlands
www.kunsthalkade.nl