View of Saint Peter's Square, Rome

Van Wittel's view of Saint Peter's Square held at Holkham Hall in Norfolk represents one of many versions he produced of this subject, which was among the most commercially demanded in his entire output. Holkham Hall, built by Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester in the 1730s and 1740s, was furnished with one of the most significant collections of Italian art brought back by an English Grand Tourist, and the Van Wittel canvas entered this assemblage as part of Coke's sustained acquisition of Italian topographic painting. The date of 1700 places the painting at the moment when Van Wittel had mastered the Saint Peter's composition after more than a decade of working in Rome, allowing him to produce authoritative views without extensive preliminary study. Bernini's colonnade had been completed in 1667 and Maderno's facade was already over eighty years old; Van Wittel's painting thus records the square as it had settled into its mature Baroque form. The Holkham version is distinguished by its provenance within one of England's greatest country house collections.

Van Wittel uses the square's axial symmetry to organise the composition around the vertical of the obelisk, with the colonnade's sweeping curves balanced on either side. His paint surface at this period is confident and relatively smooth, with architectural detail resolved through careful glazing rather than laborious impasto. The sky is painted in graduated tones from warm at the horizon to cooler blue at the upper edge.