Johann Georg Gmelin
Lago Albano with a View of Palazzo Chigi with the Church of Santa Maria Assunta in Ariccia
Pen and brush in brown over pencil. 53.2 x 74 cm.
Framed under glass.
Signed and dated lower left: W. F. Gmelin Romae 1796.
The area around the Lago Albano and Lake Nemi in the Alban Hills southeast of Rome was already considered a special place in Roman times. The gently rolling and wooded landscape was then believed to be the hunting ground of the goddess Diana. But modern artists, including Claude Lorrain and Poussin, and later Corot and the German Romantics, also fell for its magic. They all found here the Arcadia that was able to satisfy their ideals of beauty and their visual desires. Goethe and Hackert, Gmelin, Dies and Fries, Bürkel and many others, including Oswald Achenbach in later times, made pilgrimages to this region and were inspired by these lakes - like the three figures we see in Gmelin's composition on the right. The painters chose different angles from which to view the lake and the surrounding hills. Wilhelm Friedrich Gmelin's 1796 composition shows the Ariccia grove with the Palazzo Chigi and Bernini's church of Santa Maria della Assunzione.
Provenance
Joachim Fest (1926 - 2006), Kronberg. - Thomas Le Claire, Hamburg. - Grisebach, Berlin 26.11.2015. - Kunsthandel Ingrid Knirim, Münster. - Rhenish private collection.
Literature
Le Claire Kunst: Four Centuries of Master Drawings, catalogue 29, Hamburg 2011, no. 18.
Exhibitions
Wilhlem Friedrich Gmelin: Veduten und Ideallandschaften der Goethezeit, Hohenkarpfen, cat. no. 46, p. 93.