Capriccio (art)

By the late 18th century the term had expanded to mean any image with an equivalent degree of fantasy, for example as used in the titles of print series by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and Goya, both of whom focus on figures rather than architecture.

There are several etymologies that have been put forward for capriccio, one of which is derived from the Italian word capretto, which roughly translates to the unpredictable movement and behavior from a young goat.

The paintings can be anything from re-imagining a building in the future as ruins, to placing a structure in a completely different setting than that in which it exists in reality.

The architect David Mayernik cites four themes that are found in capricci:[2] When artists were commissioned to create a painting of an architectural piece, they were not necessarily concerned with accurate representation of a building.

Some artists took elements that didn't belong in the original inspiration such as people, animals, or plants and incorporated them into the work.

[6] 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.

[8] Further fantastical expansions can be seen in the Capricci, an influential series of etchings by Gianbattista Tiepolo, who 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.

[citation needed] 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, many only partly explicated by short titles.