In painting, a capriccio (Italian pronunciation: [kaˈprittʃo], plural: capricci [kaˈprittʃi]; in older English works often anglicized as "caprice") is an architectural fantasy, placing together buildings, archaeological ruins and other architectural elements in fictional and often fantastical combinations. These paintings may also include staffage (figures). Capriccio falls under the more general term of landscape painting. This style of painting was introduced in the Renaissance and continued into the Baroque.

By the late 18th century the term had expanded to mean any image with an equivalent degree of fantasy, for example as used in the titles of print series by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and Goya, both of whom focus on figures rather than architecture.

The term is also used for other types of art with an element of fantasy (as capriccio in music).

There are several etymologies that have been put forward for capriccio, one of which is derived from the Italian word capretto, which roughly translates to the unpredictable movement and behavior from a young goat. This etymology suggests that the art style is unpredictable and as open as the imagination can make it.

In the 17th century, Filippo Baldinucci defined the capriccio as a dreamlike interpretation of the subject of a work that comes from a free imagination. Capriccio works often surround architecture that has been changed with pieces of a view that has taken artistic liberty into account. Capriccio often takes existing structures and places them into re-imagined settings and characteristics. The paintings can be anything from re-imagining a building in the future as ruins, to placing a structure in a completely different setting than that in which it exists in reality. The subjects of capriccio paintings cannot be taken as an accurate depiction due to the fantastical nature of the genre.

The architect David Mayernik cites four themes that are found in capricci:

When artists were commissioned to create a painting of an architectural piece, they were not necessarily concerned with accurate representation of a building. Rather, they could be freer in terms of interpretation and artistic license. This allowed the artists to add decorations or other architectural features at their own discretion. This artistic freedom in capriccio allows continual transformation of a building. This was aided by the fact that architecture commonly is composed of strong lines, both horizontal and vertical that can be analogous to other architectural works, making it possible to take parts of other architectural works and fit them into the new artistic view of a particular building that was being recreated in the form of capriccio. Some artists took elements that didn't belong in the original inspiration such as people, animals, or plants and incorporated them into the work. In the realm of capriccio, a painting of a building is not a record or history, but is a piece of artwork before anything.

As capriccio paintings were recreated by different artists, the original form of the subject was able to move farther from reality. This further allowed artists to take liberty with architectural renditions. Capriccio is thought to be a form of art that appeals to the aesthetics of the viewer by taking liberty with extravagance that eventually turned into art that was intentionally fantastical in regards to the original architectural piece.