- 5
Carl Rottmann
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Description
Carl Rottmann
German, 1797-1850
syrakus-grab des archimedes (the tomb of archimedes)
oil on canvas
43 by 58.5 cm., 17 by 23 in.
Painted circa 1830-32.
Provenance:
Acquired by the family of the present owner, circa 1900
Carl Rottmann is best known for his cycles of evocative, idealised landscapes of Greece and Italy, produced for his patron, King Ludwig I of Bavaria. It is likely that Rottmann based the present composition on his own study of the landscape around Sicily's 'Ear of Dionysos' - an artificial cavern with exceptional acoustic properties - executed around 1826-27 during his travels in Italy, and on drawings of the tomb of Archimedes published as lithographs by the architect Friedrich von Gartner in 1819. The wealth of studies with which Rottmann returned to Munich in 1827 so impressed Ludwig I that he was chosen to execute the fresco cycle of Italian landscapes for the western arcades of the Munich Hofgarten, its subject the theatre of Syracuse. For the commission, Rottmann returned to Sicily during the winter of 1829-30, completing the cycle in 1833.
In the present painting, the tomb of Archimedes is dramatically illuminated from the left, creating a stage like setting. A thunderstorm has just passed, leaving its trace in a puddle of rain in the foreground, and in the dramatic cloud formations of the sky. The windswept landscape reflects the impact that the passage of time and the elements have had on the architectural details of the monument, which have virtually been erased. 'With such references to the inexorable passage of time and the fall of classical cultures, landscape painting was intended to achieve the rank of history painting, while accomodating the King's interest in historically significant subjects.'(Peter Wegmann, Caspar David Friedrich to Ferdinand Hodler: A Romantic Tradition, Leipzig, 1993, p. 106)
As a student in Munich, Rottmann was an admirer of Joseph Anton Koch, whose heroic landscapes had a formative influence on the young artist. Looking to these as his model, Rottmann developed his own freely fashioned landscape style, manipulating or disregarding exact topographical reality in order to heighten the impact and evocative quality of his works. In his paintings, nature is seen as transcendental and all powerful, informed with the divine spirit itself. Through his works, Rottmann expressed the romantic conviction that all human effort is but fleeting in the greater scheme of things, that the awesome elementary forces of nature dominate everything, and that in the eternal cycle of nature, human life and culture is but transitory.
Two other versions of this painting, painted in the same years, are recorded in Dr. Erika Rodiger-Dirufs monograph on the artist, Carl Rottmann 1797-1850. Monographie und kritischer Werkkatalog, Munich, 1978, nos. 289 & 290, p. 81. The latter of these versions is in Berlin's Schlosser und Garten collection.
We are grateful to Dr. Erika Rodiger-Diruf for her assistance in the cataloguing of this work.
German, 1797-1850
syrakus-grab des archimedes (the tomb of archimedes)
oil on canvas
43 by 58.5 cm., 17 by 23 in.
Painted circa 1830-32.
Provenance:
Acquired by the family of the present owner, circa 1900
Carl Rottmann is best known for his cycles of evocative, idealised landscapes of Greece and Italy, produced for his patron, King Ludwig I of Bavaria. It is likely that Rottmann based the present composition on his own study of the landscape around Sicily's 'Ear of Dionysos' - an artificial cavern with exceptional acoustic properties - executed around 1826-27 during his travels in Italy, and on drawings of the tomb of Archimedes published as lithographs by the architect Friedrich von Gartner in 1819. The wealth of studies with which Rottmann returned to Munich in 1827 so impressed Ludwig I that he was chosen to execute the fresco cycle of Italian landscapes for the western arcades of the Munich Hofgarten, its subject the theatre of Syracuse. For the commission, Rottmann returned to Sicily during the winter of 1829-30, completing the cycle in 1833.
In the present painting, the tomb of Archimedes is dramatically illuminated from the left, creating a stage like setting. A thunderstorm has just passed, leaving its trace in a puddle of rain in the foreground, and in the dramatic cloud formations of the sky. The windswept landscape reflects the impact that the passage of time and the elements have had on the architectural details of the monument, which have virtually been erased. 'With such references to the inexorable passage of time and the fall of classical cultures, landscape painting was intended to achieve the rank of history painting, while accomodating the King's interest in historically significant subjects.'(Peter Wegmann, Caspar David Friedrich to Ferdinand Hodler: A Romantic Tradition, Leipzig, 1993, p. 106)
As a student in Munich, Rottmann was an admirer of Joseph Anton Koch, whose heroic landscapes had a formative influence on the young artist. Looking to these as his model, Rottmann developed his own freely fashioned landscape style, manipulating or disregarding exact topographical reality in order to heighten the impact and evocative quality of his works. In his paintings, nature is seen as transcendental and all powerful, informed with the divine spirit itself. Through his works, Rottmann expressed the romantic conviction that all human effort is but fleeting in the greater scheme of things, that the awesome elementary forces of nature dominate everything, and that in the eternal cycle of nature, human life and culture is but transitory.
Two other versions of this painting, painted in the same years, are recorded in Dr. Erika Rodiger-Dirufs monograph on the artist, Carl Rottmann 1797-1850. Monographie und kritischer Werkkatalog, Munich, 1978, nos. 289 & 290, p. 81. The latter of these versions is in Berlin's Schlosser und Garten collection.
We are grateful to Dr. Erika Rodiger-Diruf for her assistance in the cataloguing of this work.