Lot 2504 Dα

Following his apprenticeship in Berlin (1753-1762) and a longer stay in Paris (1765-1768), Jakob Philipp Hackert arrived in Rome in the winter of 1768. He moved into a house on the Spanish Steps, Selciata di San Sebastianello 5, and remained there until 1786. Shortly after his arrival in Rome, Hackert renewed his contacts to the painter Johann Christian von Mannlich (1741-1822), whom he had previously met in Paris and who had been living in the Eternal City since 1766. The two became friends with numerous other artists in the city, and Mannlich writes in his memoirs of the year 1769: “We found ourselves in very merry company, every Sunday and holiday we would go out to the Villa Madama, not far from the Ponte Molle, about three-quarters of a mile from Rome. The palace […] was at our disposal.”

The ancient Pons Milvius bridge, commonly referred to as the Ponte Molle, crosses the Tiber to the north of Rome and provides those arriving at the city from that direction with their first views of it. Their gaze is led across the river to Saint Peter's and the Vatican. Gianicolo hill rises up on the right behind Saint Peter's basilica, upon it one sees the fortified city walls constructed under Pope Urban VIII in 1643 which connected with the so-called Leonine Walls. Hackert had already made a watercolour sketch there in 1769 (now housed in the Klassik Stiftung Weimar) as well as a gouache (in an English private collection), and an oil painting now kept in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt was to follow the next year. This watercolour was painted two years later.

The work comes with a detailed expertise by Dr Claudia Nordhoff.