Landscapes were, in part, higher in demand than depictions of Catholic religious imagery to buyers from Protestant Europe during the Age of the Enlightenment.
[1] Items in demand by travellers were paintings evoking memories of the place, playing the role that photographic postcards now fill.
Rosa painted tempestuous short range arrangements of natural elements, a craggy hillock with perilously perched trees.
His paintings had a stock arrangement of a nearby tree in a pastoral hill or mountainside, and with distant ruins or a recognizable mountain in the background.
Posillipo at one end of the crescent shape bay of Naples, was a natural spot that allowed the painters to paint both buildings and water.
[4] Like Hackert before him, Pitloo became a professor at the Accademia di Belli Arti in Naples, and was able to influence fellow painters and pupils such as Carl Götzloff, Giacinto Gigante, Teodoro Duclere, Gabriele Smargiassi, Vincenzo Franceschini, Achille Vianelli, and Consalvo Carelli.
The most prominent of Pitloo's students was Giacinto Gigante (1806–1876), who started his career working for the Neapolitan Royal Topographic Office.