Lot 1696 Dα

Carl Rottmann executed the so-called "Greece Cycle" on behalf of King Ludwig I in 1847. The works were initially conceived for the Hofgarten arcades in the encaustic technique, but were then given their own room in the newly built Munich Pinakothek, where they were installed in 1853. The cycle consists of 32 Greek landscapes and is considered Rottmann's greatest work.
"Aulis" is one of these Greek landscapes. In June 1847, the king himself noted that Rottmann had already created a version in oils (Bierhaus-Rödiger, op. cit., p. 408). A total of three versions of this composition are known to exist; however, it is no longer possible to clarify which is the prime version. The distinctive light effects are clearer in this version than in the other two, and this mystical lighting is certainly what interested the painter most of all - even taking precedence over an exact topographical rendering. Goethe wrote of Rottmann's Greece cycle: "The pictures have the highest truth, but no trace of reality ... And precisely that is true idealism, which knows how to use real means in such a way that the resulting truth produces an illusion which appears real" (H. Decker, op. cit., p. 42).