View of the Piazza del Popolo, Rome

Van Wittel starts in Italy by following the tradition established in the sixteenth century of depicting the sights of the city in prints which culminates in the following century in Piranesi’s peerless etchings of Rome. One of van Wittel’s etchings is a panoramic view of Piazza del Popolo, made from the top of Porta del Popolo, the main entrance to the city for travellers arriving from the north. It was based on a drawing by Cornelis Meijer (1629-1701), an illustration to Meijer’s “L’arte di restituire a Roma” (published in Rome, 1683).

The etching was retouched in pen and ink.