In painting, a capriccio (Italian pronunciation: [kaˈprittʃo], plural: capricci [kaˈprittʃi]; sometimes spelled "caprice" in older English texts) is an imaginative scene that combines buildings, ancient ruins, and other architectural elements in creative and often unusual ways. These paintings may also include people or figures. Capriccio is a type of landscape painting. This style began during the Renaissance and continued through the Baroque period.

By the late 1700s, the term was used to describe any image with a similar level of fantasy, such as those in print series by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and Goya. Both artists focused more on people than on buildings in their work.

The word "capriccio" is also used in other types of art, such as music, where it refers to a piece with a playful or imaginative quality.

Capriccio style

The word capriccio has several possible origins. One comes from the Italian word capretto, which means the playful and unpredictable behavior of a young goat. This suggests that the art style is imaginative and not limited by rules.

In the 17th century, an artist named Filippo Baldinucci described capriccio as a dreamlike version of a subject created through free imagination. These artworks often show buildings that have been changed or combined with other views. Artists take real structures and place them in new, reimagined settings. For example, a building might be shown as ruins in the future or placed in a completely different location than where it actually exists. Because of the fantastical nature of capriccio, these paintings should not be seen as accurate depictions of real places.

An architect named David Mayernik identified four common themes in capriccio:
1. Placing buildings or subjects in unusual or unexpected ways.
2. Showing buildings in different conditions, such as old ruins or future ruins.
3. Changing the size or scale of buildings or subjects.
4. Altering grand features like cities or fountains in creative ways.

When artists were asked to paint buildings, they were not required to show them exactly as they were. Instead, they had more freedom to use their imagination. This allowed them to add decorations or other architectural elements as they saw fit. This artistic freedom let artists continuously change the appearance of buildings. Architecture often has strong horizontal and vertical lines that are similar to those in other buildings, making it easier to mix and match parts from different structures. Some artists even added people, animals, or plants to their paintings that were not in the original inspiration. In capriccio, a painting of a building is not a record of history but a piece of artwork.

As more artists created capriccio paintings, the original buildings in the artwork became even more different from reality. This gave artists more freedom to change how buildings looked. Capriccio is considered a type of art that focuses on beauty by taking creative liberties, leading to works that are intentionally fantastical compared to the real buildings they are based on.

History

The earlier form of this type of decorative painting can be found in 16th-century Italian art, especially in the painted architectural settings that framed large frescoes and ceiling decorations called "quadratture." These architectural details became more important in 17th-century art and were later painted as separate subjects on canvas.

In mid-17th-century Rome, artists like Alessandro Salucci and Viviano Codazzi helped popularize this style. Their work showed different methods: Codazzi’s paintings, called "capricci," focused on realistic scenes, while Salucci used more creative freedom by rearranging Roman buildings to fit his compositions. The "quadratture" frescoes by Agostino Tassi and the city views by Claude Lorrain and Herman van Swanevelt, which Codazzi saw in Rome, may have inspired him to begin painting capricci.

A well-known artist who painted capricci was Giovanni Paolo Pannini (1691–1765). In the 1740s, Canaletto expanded this style through his etched "vedute ideali," and other artists like Piranesi and his followers also created works in this style.

Later examples include Charles Robert Cockerell’s paintings A Tribute to Sir Christopher Wren and A Professor’s Dream, and Joseph Gandy’s 1818 work Public and Private Buildings Executed by Sir John Soane. The artist Carl Laubin has also painted modern capriccios that honor these earlier works.

More imaginative versions of this style appear in the Capricci, a famous series of etchings by Gianbattista Tiepolo. In these works, Tiepolo reduced architectural details to pieces of classical statues and ruins, with small groups of figures—such as soldiers, philosophers, and young people—engaging in mysterious activities. These etchings do not have titles to explain their meaning; instead, mood and style are the main focus. A later series by Tiepolo was called Scherzi di fantasia ("Fantastic Sketches"). His son, Domenico Tiepolo, imitated these prints and sometimes used the term in his titles.

In the 19th century, Francisco Goya created a series of 80 prints called Los Caprichos, and a final group of prints from his The Disasters of War series, which he named "caprichos enfáticos" ("emphatic caprices"). These works differ from the usual light-hearted style of capricci. Instead, they use Tiepolo’s format of figures drawn from Spanish life to create sharp critiques and satires of society, often leaving their meanings unclear. One of the most famous prints is The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.

Notable capriccio artists

• Name: Pietro Capelli
• Name: Charles-Louis Clérisseau
• Name: Leonardo Coccorante
• Name: Viviano Codazzi
• Name: Domenico Gargiulo
• Name: Giovanni Ghisolfi
• Name: Gennaro Greco
• Name: Francesco Guardi
• Name: Ascanio Luciano
• Name: Pietro Paltronieri
• Name: Giovanni Paolo Panini
• Name: Giovanni Battista Piranesi
• Name: Hubert Robert
• Name: Marco Ricci
• Name: Alessandro Salucci