Veduta d’Itri (Landscape with a View of Itri)

While travelling to Naples and Caserta along the Appian Way, the artist, who worked from 1786 onwards at the Court in Naples, first visited Itri, a town north of Gaeta, in 1782, and then again in 1792; he recorded it in vedutas. In the painting, Hackert offers a view of the wide countryside, a mixture of composed ideal landscape, Arcadian yearning, and real veduta. In the middle of the picture, slightly off centre, stands Itri and the castle above it, both bathed in the soft morning light. Mist rises from the surrounding valleys, shrouding the outline of the Monti Aurunci, with Monte Orso towering up from the range, in a soft haze. By contrast, the foreground is clear, all its details sharp to the eye. From a slightly raised vantage point, the viewer gazes at the mirror of a lake, on the shores of which cows graze, framed on both sides by trees in whose shade on the left we see a shepherd and his dog. The building on the hill to the left is the Santuario della Madonna della Civita. (Bettina Baumgärtel)