Capriccio Art

In painting, a whim or capriccio means an architectural fantasy, placing together buildings, archaeological ruins and other architectural elements in fictional and often fantastical combinations, and may include staffage (figures). It falls under the more general term of landscape painting. The term is also used for other artworks with an element of fantasy.

In the plastic arts, Capriccio is generally an architectural fantasy, where buildings, archaeological remains, ruins and other architectural elements are composed of combinations of real and fantastic elements arranged according to the idiosyncratic criteria of the artist. Traditionally, caprice used to be a subgenre of landscape painting, but with the passage of time it was also used to designate other types of works in which fantasy prevails.

The whim or "veduta ideata" in Venetian painting between the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century is configured as a real genre, that is as the art of composing the landscape through the free combination of real or fantastic architectural elements, ruins of antiquity reworked, figures and figures, according to a variety of declinations ranging from the grotesque to the visionary, from the picturesque all'elegìaco.

The predecessor of this type of decorative architectural paintings can be found in 16th-century Italian painting, and in particular in the architectural settings that were painted as the framework of large-scale frescoes and ceiling decorations known as 'quadratture'. These architectural elements gained prominence in 17th-century painting to become stand-alone subjects of easel paintings.

According to the definition of the composer and theorist of German music Michael Praetorius of 1608, a whim "is a kind of improvised fantasy, in which one passes from one theme to another" . Particularly famous and appreciated in the musical field were the 24 Caprices of the Genoese violinist Paganini, 4 of which inspired the studies of the Hungarian pianist Ferenc Liszt.

Origin:
In the Italian art historian Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), the term capriccio refers to the traits of puzzling fantasy testifying to the originality of a painter. Speaking of Filippino Lippi, he emphasizes the "strani capricci che egli espress nella pittura" (the "strange caprices that he expresses in his paintings"). Raffaello Borghini (Il Riposo, 15844) distinguishes between an inspiration drawn from others and that intrinsic to the artist: a suo capriccio.

As early as the 17th century, Viviano Codazzi, in Rome, produced architectural paintings, which represent imaginary ruins, as can be seen in his architectural Fantasies of the Pitti Palace.

Towards the end of the seventeenth century, Philip Baldinucci (Vocabolario dell'arte del disegno, 16815) finally defined capriccio as a work born from the spontaneous imagination of the painter (improvvisa). The meaning of caprice becomes metonymic by referring to the work itself, not to the whimsical idea that produced it.

Golden Age:
Early practitioners of the genre who made the genre popular in mid-17th century Rome included Alessandro Salucci and Viviano Codazzi. The artists represent two different approaches to the genre: Codazzi's capricci were more realistic than those of Salucci who showed more creativity and liberty in his approach by rearranging Roman monuments to fit his compositional objectives. The 'quadratture' frescoes of Agostino Tassi and the urban views of Claude Lorrain and Herman van Swanevelt, which he saw in Rome, may have stimulated Viviano Codazzi to start painting capricci.

This genre was perfected[citation needed] by Marco Ricci (1676–1730) but its best-known proponent was the artist Giovanni Paolo Pannini (1691–1765). This style was extended in the 1740s by Canaletto in his etched vedute ideali, and works by Piranesi and his imitators.

In the eighteenth century, the term takes on the particular meaning of fictional landscape among vedute painters. In the 1720s, Marco Ricci (1676-1730) drew numerous paintings and prints depicting landscapes with ruins and staffing. In Rome, Giovanni Paolo Panini (1691-1765) is a forerunner of the neo-classical movement with its views that depict the city and scenes of ancient ruins, in which are incorporated non-existent details but contributing to the atmosphere evoked. In Venice the genre of capricci is especially appreciated by the Venetians themselves, amused by the painter's ingenious play with architecture. In the 1740s, Canaletto published a series of capricci prints, the Vedute Ideals.

Michele Marieschi (1710-1743) lends itself to the freedoms of capriccio with the representation of the staircase of an inner palace courtyard. It is based on at least thirteen versions of motifs inspired by Marco Ricci's drawings of stage sets to give his composition a theatrical perspective. His Capriccio con edificio gotico ed obelisco (1741) shows a fantasized Venice, with a Gothic portico and an obelisk pointing to a pier, and in the background, reliefs of hills and mountains leaning against waterside houses.

Subsequent:
Later examples include Charles Robert Cockerell's A Tribute to Sir Christopher Wren and A Professor's Dream, and Joseph Gandy's 1818 Public and Private Buildings Executed by Sir John Soane. The artist Carl Laubin has painted a number of modern capriccios in homage to these works.

The term can be used more broadly for other works with a strong element of fantasy. The Capricci, an influential series of etchings by Gianbattista Tiepolo (1730s?, published in 1743), reduced the architectural elements to chunks of classical statuary and ruins, among which small groups made up of a cast of exotic and elegant figures of soldiers, philosophers and beautiful young people go about their enigmatic business. No individual titles help to explain these works; mood and style are everything. A later series was called Scherzi di fantasia – "Fantastic Sketches". His son Domenico Tiepolo was among those who imitated these prints, often using the term in titles.

Goya's series of eighty prints Los Caprichos, and the last group of prints in his series The Disasters of War, which he called "caprichos enfáticos" ("emphatic caprices"), are far from the spirit of light-hearted fantasy the term usually suggests. They take Tiepolo's format of a group of figures, now drawn from contemporary Spanish life, and are a series of savage satires and comments on its absurdity, only partly explicated by short titles.

Capricci, series of etchings by Giambattista Tiepolo (1743), reduce the architectural elements to pieces of classical statuary and ruins, among which small groups - soldiers, philosophers, young people - conduct their business. No individual titles explain these works. A later series is called Scherzi di Fantasia, "Fantastic Drawings".

The series of 80 prints of Francisco de Goya, Los caprichos, and the last set of his Disasters of the war that names caprichos enfáticos ("emphatic whims"), take again the format of the groups of personages initiated by Tiepolo, placed in the Contemporary Spanish life, to produce a succession of satires and comments on his nonsense, only partially explained by their short title.

Later examples include A Tribute to Sir Christopher Wren (circa 1838) and A Professor's Dream by Charles Robert Cockerell, and Joseph Gandy's Public and Private Buildings Executed by Sir John Soane (1818). Contemporary artist Carl Laubin has painted several modern capriccios as a tribute to these works.

Capriccio Architecture:
In architecture, a whim is an extravagant, frivolous or funny building, designed more as an artistic expression than for practical purposes. However, very few whims were originally completely devoid of practical utility: usually, over time, they stopped being used, as in the case of hunting towers.

The whims are usually found in the parks and on the land surrounding large villas and castles. Some have been deliberately built to look in ruins. The whims were particularly in vogue between the late sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Nowadays theme parks and world fairs often contain buildings similar to whims (just to give an example, the gigantic fairytale castle at Disneyland); these structures, however, are built for the purpose of attracting and entertaining visitors.

Hagley Castle inside the Hagley Hall grounds. It was built by Sanderson Miller for George, Lord Lyttelton in the mid-eighteenth century to resume the forms of a ruined medieval castle.

The concept of whim has often been suggested by the definition that madness is "a folly in the eyes of the spectator".  The typical features are:

There is no other purpose than to be an ornament.  Often with the appearance of real buildings, in reality the architectural whims are only decorations.
They are buildings, or parts of buildings.  They stand out clearly from other garden ornaments like sculptures.
They are built on purpose. The follies are deliberately built as ornaments.
They are often made eccentrically. This is not strictly necessary as a characteristic, however it is common for these structures to draw attention to themselves with unusual shapes and details.
There are often clearly false elements in the construction of whims. A canonical example is represented by the ruins: a folly which claims to be the rest of an ancient building but which in reality was already built in that state.
They are commissioned for pure pleasure.

Folies began to be present as decorative elements for gardens between the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries but flourished particularly in the two centuries that followed. There were many ruins of monastic houses and (especially in Italy) of Roman villas, especially during the period of romanticism in architecture.

In any case, most of the folies were made completely without practical support, but while retaining their decorative sense, some actually had uses, often related to hunting, as in the case of towers or small houses to accommodate the various gamekeepers. In some cases some architectural whims could serve as tea houses. An association, the Folly Fellowship, was created in 1988 to protect the architectural whims. It is still today dedicated to celebrating the history and splendor of these structures and making them known to the public.

Capriccio Gardens:
folies (or in French: fabriques) were an important part of the English garden and of the French garden during the eighteenth century, as in the case of Stowe and Stourhead in England and Ermenonville and in the Gardens of Versailles in France. Often these structures were in the form of Roman temples, ruined Gothic abbeys or Egyptian monuments and pyramids. Painshill Park in Surrey contains a large number of these whims, with a large Gothic tower and various other structures of the same style, a Roman temple, a hermitage, a Turkish tent, a cave encrusted with shells and more. In France sometimes the whims were the form of farms, mills and cottages as in the case of the Hameau de la Reine of Marie Antoinette in Versailles. Often these structures had meanings of symbolic importance to enhance the virtues of ancient Rome or the pleasures of country life. The Temple of Philosophy of Ermenonville, not terminated on purpose,  is indeed symbolizing the fact that knowledge can never be considered complete, while the Temple of Modern Virtues of Stowe was deliberately left destroyed to show the decay of contemporary customs.

At the end of the 18th century, architectural whims became more exotic, representing structures from other parts of the world such as Chinese pagodas, Japanese bridges, tartar tents.