The German Artistic Community in Naples.
In 1737 Charles of Bourbon (later Charles III of Spain) was engaged to Maria Amalia of Saxony-Wettin. She was the Queen consort of Naples and Sicily from 1738 till 1759 and then Queen consort of Spain from 1759 until her death in 1760. The mother of thirteen children, and a popular person, she oversaw the construction of the Caserta Palace outside Naples as well as various other projects in her husband's domain. Due to this marriage, cultural traffic increased between Naples and Saxony. One of the most important artists from Saxony was Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-1779) who hoped to visit Naples; but while these plans were forming, Mengs became firm friends with the leading antiquarian of the age, a son of a cobbler from Prussia, J.J. Winckelmann. Mengs organized a number of visits so that the archaeologist could examine the finds at Herculaneum for himself. Winckelmann first visited Naples in 1758 which resulted in a letter to Mengs in Rome giving descriptions of what was then called the Basilica at Herculaneum. Another significance artist was Angelica Kauffmann, Swiss, but close to the German artistic community. She was in Naples between July 1763 and April 1764 with the aim of finding other wealthy and influential patrons, a strategy that paid off handsomely. The openings she made in Naples led to further opportunities in Britain since her sitters in Naples were primarily British, such as John Byng who is portrayed with Vesuvius in the background (above) and with a copy of the second volume of Le antichità di Ercolano esposte, which might be viewed as a symbol of the general interest in Neapolitan antiquity. Byng who never returned to Britain also commissioned a number of Roman subjects from Kauffmann, which according to Roettgen, betray the painter’s knowledge of the classical tradition followed by Batoni, Mengs, Dance and Gavin Hamilton who were all under the influence of Poussin who was the first artist to seriously attempt to give his work the air of ancient paintings long before the Pompeii/Herculaneum phenomenon.[1] Kauffman also met Johann Reiffenstein who introduced her to encaustic or hot wax painting which reflects the evolving debate on how ancient pictures were painted. Kauffmann was also put in contact with Winckelmann, who also sat for her. Finally, Kauffmann was very friendly with Goethe who visited Naples in 1787 with the painter Tischbein, and who visited Pompeii on 11th March 1788 where he notes the “richly painted frescoes” are in a state of deterioration, probably due to the disastrous policy of the Bourbons mentioned above.[2]
[1] Paolo D’Alconzo, “Naples and the Birth of a Tradition of Conservation”, 205.
[2] Roettgen, “German Painters in Naples”, in Rediscovering the Ancient World, 130.
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