Lot 2214 Dα

This large and magnificent drawing was created after a well-documented trek by Hackert in 1793 to the Abruzzo Ultra region on the border between the Kingdom of Naples and the Papal States. Apart from Hackert's artistic intentions, various surviving documents also reveal the interest of the king in this area. He probably intended to reactivate the old drainage canal, the so-called "Emissario di Claudio" from the first century AD, for the drainage of Lago Ficino.



Our sheet is, according to Dr Claudia Nordhoff: "A masterpiece of Jacob Philipp Hackert. It offers the viewer a wealth of visual information: Rock faces and formations, trees, bushes and other vegetation are brought out in all their details and can be appreciated and related to one another one by one by the viewer's gaze, which either follows the given paths or moves freely from one pictorial element to the next. In this way, the viewer overcomes the great distances that lie, for example, between the goats in the foreground and Capistrello's houses in the background: his or her gaze is actively involved in creating the pictorial space by taking into account the actual size of pictorial elements such as the small hut, thus closing the distance that stretches between it and the boulder in the foreground. Embedded in the surrounding landscape, the "cuniculi" of the ancient diversion channel appear darkly, adding depth to the landscape: they lead into the mountain and promise a continuation of the pictorial space beyond Monte Salviano." (quoted from the expertise of 2012).