Lot 1319 Dα

A. W. Ahlborn began his studies at the Berlin academy in 1820. He later took three long trips to Italy. He was to spend a third of his life in the country, and thus Italian landscapes played a central role in his oeuvre. Karl Friedrich Schinkel had an important and lasting influence on Ahlborn's work. This is especially evident in his composition “Blütezeit des Mittelalters” from 1829 (Öffentliche Kunstsammlungen, Basel). Just one year before this, he had painted his work “Colosseum und Via Sacra”. Ahlborn sent this piece from Italy to Berlin, where it made him famous. Among his other well-known works are "Blick in Griechenlands Blüte", a copy of a work by Friedrich Schinkel, "Gotische Kirche auf einem Felsen am Wasser", and "Mittelalterliche Stadt an einem Fluss", all of which are displayed in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin.
Ahlborn already came into contact with the artists of the Catholic Nazarene circle whilst in Rome, and he himself converted to Catholicism in 1838. This image of the Bay of Naples was painted two years before his conversion, but already displays the prominent motif of four monks, which could be interpreted as an early premonition of his later change of confession.