The Aqueducts at Caserta (1789): Art, History and Details

The Aqueducts at Caserta (1789) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Carl Ludwig Hackert (German, 1740–1796).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Such highly finished drawings by Hackert, younger brother of Jakob Philipp Hackert (who painted Waterfall of Marmore at Terni), are extremely rare. The Hackert brothers were among the first Romantic artists to adopt the practice of drawing and painting en plein air in Rome. Italians were amazed when they saw the artists roaming the countryside with large portfolios, executing finished outline drawings entirely from nature. This drawing accurately represents an aqueduct built in the middle of the 18th century in southern Italy. The degree of finish, meticulous detail of the vegetation and rocks in the foreground, recession of space, and subtle treatment of light are astonishing.

Object facts

• Title: The Aqueducts at Caserta
• Date: 1789
• Creator attribution: Carl Ludwig Hackert (German, 1740–1796)
• Culture: Germany, 18th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: gouache with graphite underdrawing
• Dimensions: Matted: 49.4 x 69.8 cm (19 7/16 x 27 1/2 in.); Sheet: 42.3 x 64 cm (16 5/8 x 25 3/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - German
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2011.116

Collection credit

Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund, acquired in honor of Alfred M. Rankin Jr. in recognition of his service as President of the Board of Trustees of the Cleveland Museum of Art (2006-2011)

Further reading listed by the museum

• Mann, C. Griffith, and Amy Bracken Sparks. "Acquisitions 2011." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 52, no. 2 (March/April 2012): 10-27.
• Glaubinger, Jane and Lemonedes, Heather. “Treasures on Paper: The Crème de la crème of the museum’s prints and drawings collection is now on view.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 54, no. 2 (March/April 2014): 6-9.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.