1056 - Jacob Philipp Hackert

Jacob Philipp Hackert Lago di Bientina Oil on canvas (relined). 65 x 87 cm. Signed and dated lower left: Lago di Bientina preso di Monte Carlo / Filippo Hackert 1805. Provenance Sold from the artist’s estate in Berlin in 1811. – German private collection. Literature About the artist, cf. C. Nordhoff/Hans Reimer: Jakob Philipp Hackert 1737-1807. Verzeichnis seiner Werke. 2 Bände, Berlin 1994.- C. Nordhoff: Jakob Philipp Hackert, Briefe (1761-1806). Herausgegeben und kommentiert von Claudia Nordhoff, Göttingen 2012. - Nachricht an das Publikum, Berlin 30. Juli 1811 (A leaflet published by the Hackert heirs containing a catalogue of his posthumous works, Munich, Bavarian State Library) The landscape painter Jakob Philipp Hackert was one of the most successful German artists working in Italy. After twenty years spent in Rome, in 1786 he was summoned to Naples by the Bourbon King Ferdinand IV to serve as court painter, a position he held until 1799. In that year, the French invasion of the Kingdom of Naples brought his life there to an abrupt end: Forced to flee, leaving almost all his possessions behind, Hackert settled in Florence. Immediately after his arrival, Hackert began exploring his new surroundings. A walking tour in 1802 took the painter to Lucca, north-west of Florence, whose environs he recorded in drawings. Approximately 15 kilometres south-east of Lucca lay a large marshy lake, the Lago di Bientina, also known as the Lago di Sesto, which was drained in the nineteenth century. Here Hackert made a pencil sketch showing a view of the lake enclosed by chains of hills; it bears the inscription ‘Lago di Bientina preso da Monte Carlo’ (fig. 1; Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, inv. no. 452-1990; see Nordhoff/Reimer 1994, II, cat. no. 1104). The view was therefore taken from the small hill town of Montecarlo, situated at an elevation of approximately 162 metres on the south-western edge of the marshy lake area. In 1804 Hackert used this sketch as the basis for the present painting. The lake stretches across the middle ground, its marshy shores clearly visible. In front of it are meadows, small copses and further stretches of water; individual buildings stand out brightly amid the darker green tones of the vegetation. Particularly striking among them is a complex of buildings close to the lake, dominated by a large, imposing tower: This is the medieval Benedictine abbey of San Salvatore di Sesto, of which only parts of the tower survive today. The Monte Pisano rises in the background to the right, while the hills of Cerbaia can be seen in the distance to the left. A path leads from the plain into the foreground, along which a traveller with a dog and pack mule strides purposefully towards Montecarlo; beside the path, goats climb or lie resting, while gnarled oak trees frame the edges of the composition. Hackert’s painting is a rare pictorial document of the area around the Lago di Bientina, comparable in its precise execution to a painted map. The artist constructs the landscape from carefully observed details, each of which can be regarded almost as a small picture in its own right. These include the buildings scattered across the plain, the lovingly rendered goats, whose models were undoubtedly to be found on Hackert’s estate at Careggi, the donkey, which appears in similar form in various small-scale animal studies from the artist’s late œuvre, and the great oaks, whose twisted branches and characteristically jagged leaves spread across the sky. The painting is a masterpiece from the penultimate year of Hackert’s career, and he did not sell it during his lifetime. It was found among his estate, which passed to his brother-in-law, the Berlin Hofrat Friedrich Christian Behrendt, and was auctioned by him on 30 July 1811. There the painting was listed as lot 24: ‘Ansicht des Sees Bienteria gegen Monte Carlo nahe bey Lucca in Toscana 2 Fuß hoch 2 Fuß 88 Zoll breit’ [View of Lake Bienteria towards Monte Carlo near Lucca in Tuscany, 2 feet high, 2 feet 8 inches wide]. Dr Claudia Nordhoff, Rome For comparative illustrations, see the printed catalogue as well as the PDF version.