View of the Gulf of Pozzuoli from Solfatara (1803): Art, History and Details

View of the Gulf of Pozzuoli from Solfatara (1803) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Philipp Hackert (German, 1737–1807).

The work and its context

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

Attracted to its dramatic vistas, volcanoes, exotic peasants, and classical ruins, landscape painters of the 1700s and 1800s flocked to the countryside around Naples. This view looks west toward the Gulf of Pozzuoli from just above the Solfatara, an area of volcanic steam vents. The ancient town of Pozzuoli, where the apostle Paul landed on his way to Rome, lies in the distance. Hackert's attention to detail and rendering of form with extreme lucidity is characteristic of German Romantic painting.

Object facts

• Title: View of the Gulf of Pozzuoli from Solfatara
• Date: 1803
• Creator attribution: Philipp Hackert (German, 1737–1807)
• Culture: Germany, 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 146 x 190 x 14 cm (57 1/2 x 74 13/16 x 5 1/2 in.); Unframed: 119 x 166.5 cm (46 7/8 x 65 9/16 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1983.14

A detail from the museum

While in Naples, the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe took painting lessons from Philipp Hackert; their meetings were documented in Goethe's travelogue Italienische Reise (Italian Journey).

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Galerie Grünwald (Munich, Germany). Drei jahrhunderte Deutsche Malerei: 8. Oktober bis 30. November 1982. München: Galerie Grünwald, 1982.
• T.S. Bathurst, letter to Sherman Lee, Feb. 10, 1983, in CMA curatorial file.
• Sotheby's (Firm). Important Old Master Paintings. Dec. 9, 1981.

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.