Brayden Pelt

Capriccio with St. Paul’s and Old London Bridge

Antonio Joli, Italian · c. 1745 · Oil on canvas

A capriccio that frames a faithful view of the Thames—Wren’s St. Paul’s and the houses crowding Old London Bridge—through a grand colonnade that exists only in the painter’s imagination. Joli, a theatrical scene designer who worked in London in the 1740s, delighted in pairing real city vistas with invented classical architecture, the defining conceit of the genre.