Landscape with the Palace at Caserta and Vesuvius

Jacob Philipp Hackert was the eldest of five brothers who all became artists and illustrators. Hackert first trained with his father, Philipp, then continued his studies at the Berlin Academy with Nicolas Le Sueur, before studying in the north of Germany and then in Sweden, where he is documented in 1764 in the company of Baron Van Olthoff. An itinerant painter, Hackert is recorded in Paris in 1765 with his brother Johann Gottlieb and in Italy in 1768, living in Rome. There he became part of the large German community whose illustrious members included Anton Rafael Mengs and Johann Joachim Winckelmann. He visited Naples in 1770 in order to execute a commission for Sir William Hamilton, returning there in 1782. In the latter year Ferdinand IV became interested in his work and commissioned a series of paintings that culminated in Hackert’s appointment in 1786 as court painter in Naples. He lived in that city until 1799 when it was occupied by the French troops under General Championnet, moving at that point to Livorno. For the Neapolitan court Hackert produced landscapes, views of Naples and its surroundings with figures, and hunting, rural and military scenes. He became friends with Goethe who visited him in Naples on 14 March 1787, a meeting that the poet described in his travel diary.