1777
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
The Waterfall of Marmore at Terni is a 1777 by Jacob Philipp Hackert, a Romanticism work, depicting Waterfall, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a tall waterfall crashing down rocky cliffs, framed by trees and mist. Hackert painted this while living in Italy, where wealthy travelers paid him to document famous sights. The Marmore waterfall was a popular stop—artists loved its drama. He made the scene feel real by adding tiny figures for scale and softening the edges with haze. Look up *chiaroscuro* to see how light and shadow shape landscapes like this.
Influenced by the landscapes of Claude Lorrain and seventeenth-century Dutch artists, the German Jakob Philipp Hackert was one of the most successful landscape artists based in late 18th-century Rome. His precise renderings of beautiful and historic sites attracted an international clientele on the European grand tour. This finished drawing depicts one of Italy's most spectacular natural phenomena, the Marmore waterfall at Terni, located north of Rome. Hackert carefully crafted the composition so that the detailed cliffs covered with foliage frame the tiered cascade from its soaring heights…
This work recalls the words written by the artist's close friend, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who declared that an artist should "give his work of art a content and a form through which it appears both natural and beyond Nature."
Read the full account in the museum source.
Jacob Philipp Hackert (15 September 1737 – 28 April 1807) was a landscape painter from Brandenburg, who did most of his work in Italy.
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