Capriccio with Roman monuments, including the Castel Sant’Angelo and Saint Peter’s
Bernardo Bellotto, the nephew of the famous view-painter Canaletto, serves up an architectural fantasy known as a 'capriccio.' He’s taken Rome’s greatest hits—the massive cylindrical Castel Sant’Angelo fortress and the distant dome of St. Peter’s Basilica—and mashed them together along the riverbank in a scene that never actually existed. It’s not a geographically accurate map, but rather a theatrical stage set where tiny 18th-century figures fish and stroll past crumbling ruins, creating a perfect, idealized postcard of the Eternal City.
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