| Viviano an early specialist in architectural landscape painting of seventeenth century Italy. Codazzi is variously credited with inventing this subject, or simply popularizing a subject he learned from Agostino Tassi. Training with the Bamboccianti, notably Breenbergh and Poelenburgh, has been suggested. Scholars are not unanimous about CodazzTs activity before his arrival in Naples. Codazzi remained in Naples until the Masaniello revolt of 1647. During that time he was active, producing easel pictures involving well executed, evocative, and often fanciful architectural perspectives, set in a landscape. These perspectives clearly have their origins in the mannerist traditions of the previous century. His pictures are remarkable for beautifully balancing fantasy with reality. Generally, another painter supplied his figures. In Naples, that artist was often Domenico Gargiulo, known as Micco Spadaro, a collaboration that is well documented. Notable examples include the architectural elements he suppled for Lanfranco's Pool of Bethesda (dated 1638, Apostoli the colonnade with a staircase he added to StanzioneV Ecce Homo, painted for the Certosa of S. Martino in 1636-1647 and a colonnade provided for a Crucifixion painted by Cavaliere d'Arpino, also in the Certosa. We also know he painted architecture for Artemisia Gentileschi's S. Gennaro in the Duomo of Pozzuoli. From 1647 to at least 1657, Codazzi lived in Rome. From 1657 a document survives in the form of a census report, describing Codazzi as a painter from Bergamo, fifty years old, living in via Vittoria with a wife and numerous children. No documents record his whereabouts from 1659 to 1667, but it is assumed that he traveled. He must have returned to Rome, and then died there in 1670. Though his style did not undergo major evolutions, the changing collaboration with figure painters is some indication of the date of individual paintings. |
