Viviano Codazzi (Italian, c. 1604 – 1670)
Viviano Codazzi (Italian, c. 1604 – 1670)
Viviano Codazzi (Italian, c. 1604 – 1670)
Viviano Codazzi
Italian, c. 1604 – 1670
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Viviano Codazzi was an Italian architectural painter who was active during the Baroque period. He is known for his architectural paintings, capricci, compositions with ruins, and some vedute. He worked in Naples and Rome. He is known in older sources as Viviano Codagora or il Codagora.
Viviano Codazzi was born in Valsassina near Bergamo around 1604. His family relocated to Rome by 1605.
Viviano most likely trained in Rome. He had moved by 1633 to Naples where he worked on commissions at the Certosa di San Martino resulting from his connections with his fellow Bergamasque Cosimo Fanzago. A major commission in Naples was a series of four large canvases representing ancient Roman scenes (including one depicting gladiatorial combats in the Colosseum) for the Buen Retiro in Madrid, with figures by Domenico Gargiulo. Codazzi was a painter of architecture and the figures in his compositions were always painted in by specialist figure painters. In Naples his principal collaborator for the figures was Gargiulo. The artist married on 3 May 1636 Candida Miranda, from Naples. The couple had seven children of whom Niccolò and Antonio became painters.
After relocating to Rome following the revolt of Masaniello in 1647, he collaborated with painters from the circle of mainly Dutch and Flemish painters active in Rome who were known as the Bamboccianti. His most frequent collaborators were Michelangelo Cerquozzi and Jan Miel. He further collaborated with Filippo Lauri, Adriaen van der Cabel and Vicente Giner during the 1660s. Artemisia Gentileschi relied on Viviano Codazzi to paint in the architectural backgrounds in a number of her paintings. An example of such collaboration is the Bathsheba in the Columbus Museum of Art.
Codazzi had several close followers, including Ascanio Luciano and Andrea di Michele in Naples, his son Niccolò Codazzi (1642–1693), Vicente Giner ( a native of Spain), and Domenico Roberti. In Northern Europe, artists such as Wilhelm Schubert van Ehrenberg, Jacobus Ferdinandus Saey, Jacob Balthasar Peeters, Antoon Gheringh and Jan Baptist van der Straeten were also influenced or inspired by his work.
Viviano's son, Nicolo (Naples, 1642 - Genoa, 1693) was a painter of architectural paintings and capricci like his father. Another son called Antonio was also a painter but his work is not well known.
Despite his intense artistic activity Viviano Codazzi was registered as poor in 1657. He resided in Rome except for brief absences (around 1653 and possibly between 1659 and 1666) until his death in Rome on 5 November 1670.