Capriccio

Buildings and architectural elements have often been used in landscapes to enhance, adorn or add a sense of mystery or scale to a painting – even though they do not actually exist in the scene. A fantasy dreamscape of this nature is known as a capriccio.

Capricci (the plural) can include a single imaginary or transposed ruin such as those that the French Painter, Claude Lorrain, placed in many of his landscapes or can be entirely made up of buildings brought together to create a fantasy or decorative scene.

The image shows section of ‘Classical Composition’ by Peter Taylor Ward.