1821
Oil on canvas
25.0 x 37.5 cms
Sold
There are two other versions of the present painting, see M.L.Bang, No. 226, 44 x 67 cm, 1820, Sammlung Schäfer, Schweinfurt and No.225, 44 x 67, 1820, Nat. Gal. Oslo. After a two year stay in Dresden, Dahl was invited by the Danish Prince Christian Frederick to join him on a tour to Italy. This journey lasted from June 1820 until July of the following year and was crucial to Dahl's artistic development and particularly to his practice of drawing and painting from Nature. In Italy Dahl spent most of his time in Rome and at the Bay of Naples, and from mid-August until the end of November 1820 he joined the Danish Royal entourage at the Villa Quisisana on Monte S. Angelo, south of Naples. There he was commissioned by the Princess to paint the Schäfer picture as a birthday present for her husband. In his Diary, 4-5th Sept 1820: "I have painted the view from Monte Koppolo - the one I began a few days ago for the Princess - meant for the Prince on his birthday"(Sammlung Schäfer). Number 225, the picture in Oslo, Dahl kept for himself. Monte Coppolo and Piemonte are part of the same mountain massif behind Quisisana opening up a spectacular view of Mont Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples. In Rome in June 1821, the artist asked his good friend and Copenhagen architectural painter, J.H. Koch, for one of his much admired architectural drawings of the Colloseum in Rome. In exchange Dahl presented Koch with the above picture. A cabinet piece, it not only differs in size when compared with the two versions painted earlier in Naples, but also in the dramatic effect of Mount Vesuvius erupting. Almost all of Dahl's paintings from his Italian period are today either in the Thorvaldsens Museum in Copenhagen orin the Rasmus Meyers Collection, Bergen, Norway.
CONTACT GALLERY
M.L.Bang, Johan Christian Dahl, Life and Works, Oslo, 1987, no.317 (illustrated)
