Goethe and the German Community of Painters in Rome.
Johann Wilhelm Goethe (1749-1832) was one of the most intelligent minds of the age. Not only a novelist, playwright and poet, he was also a scientist with interests in botany, geology, anatomy and colour theory. His Italian Journey (published about 1817) is one of the most famous written accounts of the Grand Tour, though the focus is predominantly on Rome and Naples. Goethe arrived in Rome on 29th October 1786 and left it on 23rd April 1788. As Elizabeth Einberg states, Goethe transformed the conventional Grand Tour into “an intense emotional experience, the modern idea of a man’s journey [as he put it} to find himself.” While he was engaged with this psychological quest, he benefited from the German artists living in Rome. He soon became a member of the circle of Angelica Kauffmann and her husband Antonio Zucchi (another artist) who invited him to their soirées. Angelica lived near the studio of her compatriot Trippel who made an impressive bust of her friend Goethe. He was also painted and drawn by his artist friends from whom he took drawing lessons. Angelica painted him when he was 38 years of age and Tischbein made several drawings of Goethe’s daily life in Rome. Goethe’s routine would be to study and read before 9 (above), before setting out to visit the museums and galleries as well as artists’ studios. Goethe actually resided near Canova’s studio as a painter under the alias Phillip Moeller, an alias he eventually discarded. The other main German artist associated with Goethe in Rome is the previously mentioned landscape painter from Brandenburg, Johann Phillipp Hackert who spent most of his time painting in Italy, particularly Naples.
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