Lot 1276 Dα

Jakob Philipp Hackert, after his education in Berlin and soujourns in Sweden and France, worked for the majority of his life in Italy, where he ascended to an internationally prominent and sought after artist. His preferred subjects were views of Rome and Naples and their surroundings, harbour scenes and coastal landscapes and, a particular emphasis, landscapes depicting the Roman Campagna. As of 1768 he was active in Rome, as of 1786 he was court painter of King Ferdinand IV of Naples. Travellers to Italy from all over commissioned and purchased his landscape paintings, which established his reputation in all of Europe. A comprehensive survey of his oeuvre is currently being presented in the exhibition “Jakob Philipp Hackert - Europe's Landscape Painter in the Age of Goethe” in Weimar and Hamburg 2008/2009.
The political upheavals in Europe and Italy following the French Revolution forced Hackert to flee from Naples i n 1799. He settled at a country estate in San Piero di Careggi, near Florence, where he was to remain until his death in 1807. The present work, inscribed "Il Monte Liberatoro, a Molina vicino alla Cava" at the lower margin, was painted during these final years. It is based upon a drawing the artist had made in 1782, which captures a view of the small village Molinara in the La Cava valley, near Vietri. In the background Monte San Liberatore is recognizable. In its essentials, the painting adapts the decades earlier drawing, nonetheless the entire composition - particularly the addition of the tree which confines the composition at right - is transformed into an ideal landscape enlivened with topographically exact elements. Hackert painted a second, smaller version of this subject in 1806.