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ARTISTIC LANDSCAPES
by Ludovico Pratesi
Views of Capri and Ischia
- the Grand Tour canvases
of Jacob Philipp Hackert, a
leading light of late 18th-century
European vedutismo.
Jacob Philipp Hackert was born with a
pencil in his hand, to a family where art
was a fact of life. His father, a well-known
portrait painter who lived in Prenzlau, in the
Brandenburg marches, sent him to study in a
seminary, but such was the young boy’s talent
that Hackert junior (1737-1807) abandoned
the way of the cloth to pursue his one and
only passion in life: painting. At the tender
age of 11, Philipp showed his family his oil
portrait of a mounted general, plus a whole
sequence of drawings devoted to the flower
collection his father assiduously amassed
in their garden. This tangible sign of his
interest in nature stayed with him for the rest
of his life, prompting him to leave behind his
familiar Northern lands, dotted with pines and
crystalline lakes, and travel to Italy, the main
destination on the Grand Tour: the journey
of initiation on which every self-respecting
European intellectual embarked in those days.
A sinistra, “La Marina nie, banchetti e balli,
Piccola di Sorrento”,
un olio su tela dipinto sempre sostenuto dal
da Hackert nel 1794.
favore del re, che lo
Left, Marina Piccola,
ospita a Napoli, in
Sorrento, oil on canvas
by Hackert, 1794. un appartamento a
Palazzo Francavilla
dove, nel 1811, incontra Goethe che rimane
impressionato dalla stima che i Borbone
hanno di lui. «Hackert apparteneva a quella
categoria di persone che in modo deciso
sono gli artefici del proprio destino. I molti
che amavano l’arte lo cercavano e lo pagavano,
i numerosi dilettanti lo prendevano ad
esempio» racconta Goethe. «Così il pittore
fu stimato, ma non invidiato, e potè essere
sempre se stesso senza nuocere ad alcuno».
Ma al di là dell’ottimo carattere, Goe-
Towards the Grand Tour destinations
After living in Paris for a few years, in 1769
Philipp and his brother Georg decided to
leave their homeland for the main Grand
Tour destinations of Venice, Florence, Rome
and Naples. Taking brushes and canvases
along for the ride, during the trip the artist
painted the places that he was most struck by,
including the ruins of the Roman forums, and
some rather intense views of Tivoli and the
countryside around Rome, which he painted
with almost obsessive attention to detail.
It wasn’t the Eternal City but Naples, capital
of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, that was to
make Hackert’s fortune. On his first visit, the
artist admired Pompeii and Herculaneum, two
extraordinary archaeological sites that had
only just been discovered, before moving on
to the green lands of the Phlegraean Fields,
and the stunning crater on Vesuvius. It was
a true fatal attraction which left an indelible
mark on the painter’s memory. When he
returned home, the only thing he wanted
to do was go back to Campania, which he
did in 1782, abandoning a thriving career
and the favours of many crowned heads
of Europe, not least Catherine II of Russia.
Indeed, it was this Queen who sent him to
Italy with a commission to paint a view of the
Caserta Royal Palace, Vanvitelli’s spectacular
masterpiece, known as the “Versailles of
79