The Volturno with the Ponte Margherita, near Pisa, with a herdsman resting and peasants on a path

This poetic view by Jacob Philipp Hackert, signed and dated 1799, shows the Volturno with the Ponte Margherita, near the small town of Alife, close to Pisa. It was painted the year that Hackert fled from Naples, where he had been court painter to Ferdinand IV for 13 years, during which time he consolidated his European fame, becoming the most successful German landscape painter of the late 18th century. However, in early 1799, French Revolutionary forces occupied Naples, and by March Hackert had escaped, his house already having been plundered by the Neapolitan lazzaroni as a result of the breakdown in law and order. Probably taking unfinished pictures, as well as his engraving plates, Hackert fled with his brother, first to Pisa, before settling near Florence in May 1800. As Dr. Nordhoff has noted (private correspondence), it was during this period that Hackert had to begin again, having left all his personal belongings in Naples. One consequence of this was that he started executing smaller pictures, using the format of circa 60 x 90 cm., instead of his more usual format of 120 x 160 cm., which he later reverted to (for a full discussion of this period of his life, see C. Nordhoff, 'Due capolavori per una regina: scoperte su una coppia di quadri di Jakob Philipp Hackert', in Bollettino d'Arte, 128, 2004, pp. 115-126). It would appear that this picture remained in Hackert's possession until 1803, when he decided to give it a pendant (see lot 124). He then probably sold them to a Grand Tourist, and they have remained together in private collections, unrecorded, ever since.

We are grateful to Dr. Claudia Nordhoff for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.