1803
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
View of the Gulf of Pozzuoli from Solfatara is a 1803 unspecified by Jacob Philipp Hackert, a German Romanticism work, depicting Sicily, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a wide, sunlit bay framed by low hills and a smoky volcano in the distance. Tiny figures walk along the shore, and a ruined temple sits near the water. Hackert painted this spot because travelers in the 1800s loved Italy’s mix of ancient ruins and active volcanoes. The steam vents in the foreground were a real curiosity—people thought they were gates to the underworld. For more landscapes like this, look up *subject: germany, 19th century, mod euro*.
Attracted to its dramatic vistas, volcanoes, exotic peasants, and classical ruins, landscape painters of the 1700s and 1800s flocked to the countryside around Naples. This view looks west toward the Gulf of Pozzuoli from just above the Solfatara, an area of volcanic steam vents. The ancient town of Pozzuoli, where the apostle Paul landed on his way to Rome, lies in the distance. Hackert's attention to detail and rendering of form with extreme lucidity is characteristic of German Romantic painting.
While in Naples, the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe took painting lessons from Philipp Hackert; their meetings were documented in Goethe's travelogue Italienische Reise (Italian Journey).
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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