(Bergamo 1604–1670 Rome)
The Basilica of Maxentius,
oil on canvas, 130 x 96.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Maurizio Marini (1942–2011) Collection, Rome;
Private collection, Rome

Literature:
M. Marini, Viviano Codazzi. Il Capriccio del Vero, in: Ricerche di storia dell’arte, 3, Rome 1976, pp. 123-124, 127, note 23, and fig. 1 (as Viviano Codazzi and François Perrier);
G. Briganti, L. Trezzani, L. Laureati, Viviano Codazzi, in: I Pittori Bergamaschi dal XIII al XIX secolo, Il Seicento, I, Bergamo 1983, p. 701, cat. 102 (as Viviano Codazzi, figures difficult to attribute);
A. Corboz, Canaletto. Una Venezia immaginaria, Milan 1985, vol. II, pp. 440-441, fig. 492 (as Viviano Codazzi);
D. R. Marshall, The Roman Baths Theme from Viviano Codazzi to G. P. Panini: Transmission and Transformation, in: Artibus et Historiae, an art anthology, no. 23, XII, 1991, p. 155, note 18 (as Viviano Codazzi);
D. R. Marshall, Viviano and Niccolò Codazzi and the Baroque Architectural Fantasy, Città di Castello 1993, pp. 196-197, no. VC 86 (as Viviano Codazzi and unidentified figure painter);
M. Marini, Le vedute di Roma di Giovanni Battista Piranesi, 1989, ed. Rome 2006, p. 18, ill. (as Viviano Codazzi)

This painting depicts ‘the most important of the ‘topographical’ renderings of the Basilica of Constantine’ in Rome (see: Marshall 1993).It was made by Viviano Codazzi during the mid-1650s.

The subject was widely diffused during the course of the seventeenth century, and it was used by the present artist on several occasions, for example in his Basilica of Constantine with the Adoration of the Magi Musée Bertrand, Châteauroux. The frontal composition of the monument derives from an engraving by Sebastiano Serlio (Tutte l’opere, 1619, Book III, fol. 59) which was in turn derived from a drawing by Baldassare Peruzzi (Uffizi A.539v).

The imposing public building which is the subject of this painting, was begun by Emperor Maxentius and completed by Constantine during the early years of the fourth century. It was one of the grandest monuments in the Forum and it must certainly have captured the imagination of those artists that regularly portrayed the ruins of ancient Rome. In the present painting, the Basilica is represented axially to show the three vast apses of the north side of the building, the only part that still survived in Codazzi’s age, when however, the tall columns in proconnesium marble flanking the piers were still in position. This magisterial architecture provides the setting for two small figures beside an altar slab in the foreground: one a young shepherd and an aged woman.

The striking realism with which the building is represented is typical of Codazzi’s production, but this is in a certain sense tempered by the elliptical window through which the composition is seen, almost as if to intentionally demark the passage from real space, into the illusionistic space of the picture.

As Marini observed (see literature) it is ‘penetrato di spirito fantastico e preromantico, il capriccio realistico del Codazzi ha un taglio visivo definito, con quinte parallele al piano del quadro e squarci prospettici per lo più all’orizzonte’ [‘imbued with a fantastical and preromantic spirit, Codazzi’s realistic caprice has a defined visual composition, with the coulisse parallel to the picture plane and perspectival openings largely reaching to the horizon’]. However, beyond the immediacy of this type of capriccio painting popular among seventeenth-century collectors, Marini – who published the present painting for the first time (1976) – proposes that it may also hide an allegorical meaning. Indeed, the young shepherd boy in the foreground shows the old woman approaching him a snake, this is a symbol of renewal and resurrection. The young shepherd also holds a staff, and could therefore even be identified as an allusion to Mercury, and his pacifying qualities. Moreover, the oval in which the entire scene is enclosed could allude to eternity, and in a broader sense, to the perpetuity of Catholicism. These are all references that would have been clearly recognised by the cultured Roman elite that commissioned this kind of painting.

Viviano Codazzi was among the most important exponents of seventeenth-century view painting, and one of the genres greatest innovators. A native of Bergamo, from 1634 he established himself in Naples where, in addition to producing easel paintings frequently in collaboration with Domenico Gargiulo, he also asserted himself as a capable quadraturista painting large-scale perspectives. Influenced by the tradition of renaissance perspective and the latest currents in view painting that then circulated in Rome, Viviano Codazzi initiated a new kind of view, in which the ancient ruins were represented with geometric precision and with dramatic effects of light and shade. He also revealed his capacity for the observation of everyday details from life: all elements reminiscent of Caravaggio’s realism. From 1648 Codazzi settled in Rome where his paintings became increasingly monumental and ‘classical’, they began to be enriched with greater pictorial and atmospheric effects, such as are exemplified by the present painting.