Gennaro Greco

Gennaro Greco also known as "Il Mascacotta" (1663–1714) was an Italian architectural painter who was active in Naples during the late Baroque period.

[1] Pozzo promoted in the treatise the practice of vedute ideata, i.e. realistic looking landscapes that combine illusionist architectural detail with fantastic elements.

[1] He is described by the 19th-century Italian art historian Carlo Tito Dalbono as a painter of views of mutilated ruins (vedute di mutilato anticaglie).

[8] Greco's architectural compositions are a link between Viviano Codazzi and the Neapolitan whims of Leonardo Coccorante (active in Naples in the first half of the 18th century).

[9] Greco's mature work depicts imaginary ruins in a very carefully observed manner often set by a bay with highly detailed ships and other structures.

In the foreground, sitting on stone blocks, two men are busy drawing the ruins, a theme that reflects that period's emerging interest in Antiquity.

An example is the Flower garland and marine landscape of the Golf of Gaeta, a collaboration with Flemish still life painter Abraham Brueghel.

The work is characteristic of late 17th century Neapolitan painting which aimed almost exclusively at ornamental and decorative effect rather than at naturalism.