Goethe in the Campagna

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Goethe in the Campagna (Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein)
Goethe in the Campagna
Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein , 1787
Oil on canvas
164 × 206 cm
Städel

Goethe in the Campagna (also: Goethe in the Roman Campagna ) is the title of the most famous painting by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein . The large-format picture in the classicist style shows the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , whom the painter portrayed on his trip to Italy in 1786/87. It has belonged to the Städel in Goethe's native Frankfurt since 1887 .

Emergence

On his trip to Italy, Goethe reached Rome on October 29, 1786 . There he lived in the shared apartment of the painters Tischbein, Johann Georg Schütz (1755-1813) and Johann Friedrich Bury (1763-1823). At that time, Tischbein received a scholarship which Duke Ernst II of Gotha-Altenburg had granted him through Goethe's mediation. A close friendship first developed between the two men, who were almost the same age; Tischbein captured the visitor in several drawings. On December 9th, 1786 he wrote in a letter to Johann Caspar Lavater : “You are right in everything you said about Goethe. ... I have started his portrait and will do it in life size, sitting on the ruins and thinking about the fate of human works. ” In his report on the trip to Italy published between 1813 and 1817 , which in turn is based on his diaries, Goethe mentions the painting several times, for example in the entry on December 29, 1786: “I am to be presented as a life-size traveler, wrapped in a white coat, sitting in the open air on an overturned obelisk , with the ruins of the Campagna di in the background Looking over Roma. There is a beautiful picture, just too big for our Nordic apartments. ” On February 17, 1787: “ The large portrait that Tischbein took of me is already growing out of the canvas. The artist had a finished sculptor make a small model of clay, which was even delicately draped with a coat. After that he paints diligently, [...]. "

According to Schulte-Strathaus, three preliminary drawings have been preserved from the time of creation, which document the decisive phases in the creation of the picture.

Shortly after Goethe's death, a drawing with ink and watercolors attributed to Goethe himself by the owner was donated to Weimar. Goethe's secretary Schuchardt questioned the contemporary witness Johann Heinrich Meyer . The latter stated that the attribution was incorrect. Friedrich Bury had drawn the figure, he, Meyer, had exchanged it and colored it lightly, and the landscape came from Johann Georg Schütz.

Goethe had a fleeting ink sketch for the picture in a portfolio (Writings of the Goethe Society, XXVI, 1910, plate 7).

A life-size watercolor sketch of the head was known from the possession of Baron von Cotta. Schulte-Strathaus could not clarify whether it was an original or a copy.

On February 22, 1787, the two men traveled together to Naples , from where Goethe left for Sicily on March 29 , while Tischbein returned to Rome to move to Naples entirely at the beginning of July. Goethe was back in Rome on June 7th. Afterwards, the “Italian Journey” mentions the picture again: “My portrait is happy, it is very similar, and everyone likes the idea […]” (entry from June 27th).

Towards the end of the stay, the friendship between the two cooled off. In 1789, Goethe described the painter in a letter to Johann Gottfried Herder as "rabbit foot, [...] lazy, unreliable, since he learned the profession of falsehood, broken words and covenants from the Italians" . The reason for this was possibly that Tischbein did not deliver the expected paintings to his patron , the Duke of Gotha. Tischbein later tried to re-establish contact with Goethe, so he designed a few watercolors for Goethe's epic Reinecke Fuchs , published in 1794, with which he wanted to reconnect with the former friendship.

Picture descriptions

Relief with Iphigenia and Orestes
Tomb of Caecilia Metella

The picture shows the poet more than life-size in a quarter profile, resting on stone blocks, which can be identified as the rubble of a fallen Egyptian obelisk based on a preliminary drawing for the painting . His gaze is serious and pensive into the distance. He wears a light, cloak-like cape under which a red jacket is visible, ocher-colored trousers, light blue silk stockings and a blue-gray slouch hat. The so-called “travel coat” is documented as being in Goethe's possession.

Behind Goethe's seat is the ivy-entwined fragment of a Greek marble relief depicting the encounter between Iphigenia and her brother Orestes as well as Pylades on Tauris ; to the right of it is a Roman composite capital . On the left you can see a small oak tree, on the ground in front a few plants, two of which can be identified as lady's mantle and ribwort .

The “strangely empty background” does not represent a real landscape. Instead, Tischbein composed his Roman Campagna from different elements, such as the ruins of a Roman aqueduct and the tomb of Caecilia Metella , which was actually located on the Via Appia at the gates of Rome. On the right edge of the picture you can see a small rural house with two windows. In the distance the mountain range of the Sabine Mountains appears , according to another representation it is the Alban Mountains . The sky is - except in the area around Goethe's head - quite darkly cloudy.

Discussion about anatomical defects

It is obvious that the representation of Goethe has considerable anatomical defects. The poet's left leg appears unnaturally long, the proportions between legs and torso are just as irritating as the position of the shoulders in relation to the legs, obviously two left feet with the corresponding shoes are depicted. Therefore the question arose whether Tischbein was overwhelmed with the representation. In fact, there is no such "mistake" in any of the painter's other works. The reason for the strange anatomy is therefore not artistic ineptitude, but the history of the work: Tischbein was unable to complete the painting, which he began in 1786, before he had to leave Naples in 1799 due to warlike events. So he didn't sign it. Investigations into the application of paint have shown that presumably only Goethe's head, hat and coat, as well as his left foot, were executed in detail. Apparently an unknown, amateur artist added the missing surfaces and copied the left foot painted by Tischbein while making the actual right foot. This is the thesis of Stephan Knobloch, the chief restorer of the Städel Museum in Frankfurt. A look at the awkwardly painted right shoe confirms this: unlike the left one, there is no elegant bow to be seen, as shown by Tischbein, but rather disordered shoelaces. According to the Städel Museum, the subsequent additions cannot be seen on infrared and X-ray images because they were made only a few years after the original fragment. Neither Tischbein nor Goethe are said to have ever seen the "finished" picture, as it was presumably sold in Naples to the Danish consul Christian Hermann Hegelin and only came to Frankfurt as a gift in 1887.

role models

Nicolaes Pietersz. Berchem: Shepherd with dog . Etching , 10 × 11.3 cm (1648/1652)

Tischbein's painting is a staging based on the model of French classicism , which can be directly connected with the oil sketch of a “seated image” by Louis Gauffier, Jeune homme assis parmis débris antiques ; Gauffier, a student of Jacques Louis David , worked at the French Academy in Rome from 1785. The interrelationships between German and French artists in the late 18th century in Rome have been forgotten in 19th century art since the Wars of Liberation .

The composition of the picture is based on that of an etching by Nicolaes Pietersz. Berchems . Berchem's work contains around 50 paintings and numerous etchings with Italian landscapes and rural personnel. Tischbein used a contemporary painting by Benjamin West as a template for the relief's Iphigenia scene .

More recent research on Johann Kaspar Lavater occasionally emphasizes the relationship between the physiognomy of the portrait and Lavater's studies of physiognomy and notes its influence on European artists, such as Jacques Louis David and Tischbein. The posture of the head is recognized in the 6th and final illustration of Goethe in Lavater's Physiognomic Fragments .

interpretation

The picture does not represent a concrete situation from Goethe's life; Rather, Tischbein's concern was to make a general statement with the painting. The painter himself gave information about the nature of this statement: He wanted to depict the poet as he "[...] thinks about the fate of human works" (see above). What is meant is their impermanence; This is how Ludwig Strack, a cousin of Tischbein, put it in 1787: "[...] the gruesome thought of transience seems to float on his face." Goethe rests on the remains of the ancient world. Their epochs are called from left to right in the order of their appearance: The obelisk represents ancient Egypt, Greece is symbolized by the relief (the depiction of Iphigenia also alludes to the play Iphigenia on Tauris , on which the poet was working at the time) , and the Roman capital marks the end of the development of ancient art.

At the same time, with the painting, Tischbein gives an idealizing, exaggerating representation of Goethe, who appears here not only as a poet, but as a universal scholar. Its monumentality is underlined by the larger than life size and the slight soffit. The big hat is like a halo; the clouds breaking up around the hat reinforce this effect and transfigure the poet into a figure of light. His loneliness lifts him above the crowd.

Provenance

Tischbein "had the still unfinished large-format painting forwarded from Rome to Naples in 1788. It initially stayed in his studio." Because of the invasion of French troops, he left Naples and left the big picture behind. It came into the ownership of the Naples-based banker Christian Hermann Heigelin, b. Stuttgart December 15, 1744, d. Naples March 15, 1820, 1787-1804 Danish consul in Naples. Jürg Arnold assumes that Tischbein sold the painting to Heigelin. After his death it came as heir to the nephew Wilhelm Ludwig Heigelin, born in 1827 . Stuttgart June 30, 1772, d. Naples February 7, 1838, then in the property of his wife, Olympia Heigelin, geb. Cutler (* 1777, died Naples 1860). Apparently the painting was sold in 1837. It did not become known to the public until about 60 years after its creation in the 1840s, when it came into the possession of the Frankfurt branch of the Rothschild banking family after a trip to Italy by Baron Carl Mayer von Rothschild . According to Ernst Schulte-Strathaus, Carl Mayer Freiherr von Rothschild is said to have acquired the painting in Rome through the mediation of his Neapolitan authorized signatory Haller. Since the 1850s the picture has been kept in a Rothschild country seat, the Günthersburg near Frankfurt. In 1887, 100 years after its creation, the picture came to the collection of the Städel Museum in Frankfurt as a gift from Adele Hannah Charlotte von Rothschild , where it was presented in the entrance area for more than 100 years. The location of the painting has been a contentious issue in the museum since the 1970s. When Klaus Gallwitz took over the management of the Städel in 1974, he removed Tischbein's painting Goethe in the Campagna from the museum entrance. The objection of Hermann Josef Abs , former banker and at the time chairman of the private Städel administration, was granted and the painting was returned to its old place. After it was integrated into the permanent collection in the course of the renovation that began in 1994, it is visible from the stairwell on the front of the first hall after the new renovation and the new hanging of the collection in 2011. Despite its emblematic significance, it is occasionally loaned out.

reception

From the beginning of the public presentation of the picture, Tischbein's portrayal shaped the image of Goethe in Germany. Goethe in the Campagna was copied many times and was widely used in engravings. To distinguish between the branched Tischbein family of artists , Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein was given the nickname "Goethe-Tischbein" after this painting. In this tradition, the image was perceived as the first representation of a world citizen. According to this, Goethe's pose is that of a mighty one, in the spirit of the Enlightenment education is perceived as power. For a long time, it also determined the image of Italy and Goethe for adolescent generations through reproductions in German school books. More recently, the painting has been judged differently, Conrady said in 1982: “A picture [...] that surrounds the person portrayed with the aura of the exceptional and does not bring him close to the viewer, but away from them to the region where the classics are usually kept: revered and rarely read. ”Since 1996, a copy of the painting has been at the place of origin, Tischbein's studio, in the Roman Casa di Goethe .

Philatelic

On June 7, 2018, the first day of issue, Deutsche Post AG issued a postage stamp with a face value of 145 euro cents with the motif of the painting in the series Treasures from German Museums . The design comes from the graphic designers Stefan Klein and Olaf Neumann from Iserlohn .

literature

  • Karl Otto Conrady: Goethe - life and work. Volume 1. Athenaeum, Königstein / Ts. 1982, ISBN 3-7610-8199-5 .
  • Sabine Schulze (ed.): Goethe and the art. Hatje, Ostfildern 1994, ISBN 3-7757-0501-5 .
  • Wieland Schmied in collaboration with Tilmann Buddensieg, Andreas Franzke and Walter Grasskamp (eds.): Harenberg Museum of Painting. 525 masterpieces from seven centuries. Harenberg, Dortmund 1999, ISBN 3-611-00814-1 .
  • Roberto Zapperi : The Incognito - Goethe's very different existence in Rome. Beck, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-406-44587-X .
  • History of the fine arts in Germany. Volume 6: Classical and Romantic. Edited by Andreas Beyer. Prestel, Munich 2006.
  • Ernst Braches: Tischbein's portrait of Goethe . De Buitenkant, Amsterdam 2017, ISBN 978-94-90913-70-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Complete print in: Goethe and Lavater, Letters and Diaries: In Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft, Ed. Heinrich Funk, Weimar, Verlag der Goethe Gesellschaft, 1901, p. 364
  2. ↑ JHW Tischbein among others: Goethe in the Campagna . kisc.meiji.ac.jp. Retrieved April 28, 2013.
  3. ↑ Schulte-Strathaus, E. in: First supplement to the Propylaen edition of Goethe's complete works, Die Bildnisse Goethe . Georg Müller Munich, 1910, p. 35 ff.
  4. ^ Goethe's works . Weimar 1897-1919; IV. Department: Goethe's Letters , Volume 9, pp. 92f.
  5. ^ A b Karl Otto Conrady: Goethe - Life and Work , Volume I, p. 450
  6. ^ Roberto Zapperi : Das Inkognito - Goethe's completely different existence in Rome , p. 97.
  7. ↑ a b History of Fine Arts in Germany , Volume 6, Classical and Romantic , p. 21.
  8. ↑ Jutta Assel, Georg Jäger: Goethe motifs on postcards: Tischbein's "Goethe in the Campagna"
  9. ↑ [blog.staedelmuseum.de/goethe-in-der-roemischen-campagna-frankfurts-mona-lisa-hat-zwei-linke-fuesse/]
  10. ↑ [blog.staedelmuseum.de/goethe-in-der-roemischen-campagna-frankfurts-mona-lisa-hat-zwei-linke-fuesse/]
  11. ^ Hermann Mildenberger: New energy under David . In: Goethe und die Kunst (1994), pp. 290f.
  12. ↑ Ch. Beutler: JHW Tischbein, "Goethe in the Campagna" . Stuttgart 1962. After: Kindler's painting lexicon . Munich 1976, vol. 12 p. 23
  13. ^ History of the Fine Arts in Germany , Volume 6, Classical and Romantic , p. 22.
  14. ↑ Karin Althaus: Lavater's selected circle of artists . In: Das Antlitz - An Obsession (2001), p. 172f ISBN 3-906574-12-1 .
  15. ↑ Physiognomic fragments, third attempt, Leipzig and Winterthur 1777  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , P. 224@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / imgbase-scd-ulp.u-strasbg.fr  
  16. ↑ Richard Weihe: Face and Mask. Lavater's character measurement. In: Gert Theile (Ed.): Anthropometry. 2004, ISBN 3-7705-3864-1 , pp. 252f.
  17. ↑ Quoted from: History of Fine Arts in Germany , Volume 6, Classical and Romanticism , p. 22.
  18. ↑ Cf. Jürg Arnold: Christian Heigelin (1744-1820). Son of a baker from Stuttgart, banker in Naples, freemason, mediator of Italian culture. (Jürg Arnold), Ostfildern (2012), p. 32-36: "Die Gemäldesammlung", here p. 35.
  19. ↑ Cf. on him Jürg Arnold: "Contributions to the history of the Otto family (in Ulm, Stuttgart and Heilbronn) and the Heigelin family (in Stuttgart) , (Jürg Arnold), Ostfildern 2012, p. 209 f .; also Jürg Arnold; Christian Heigelin (2012); on the probable sale, ibid., P. 35, note 161.
  20. ↑ Cf. Jürg Arnold: Christian Heigelin (2012), p. 32-36: "Die Gemäldesammlung", here p. 35 f. with notes 159-168. Arnold assumes, ibid., P. 35 with notes 163-167 that the picture came into the property of Carl Mayer Freiherrn von Rothschild as early as 1837 .
  21. ^ Official homepage of the Städel : Goethe in the Roman Campagna .
  22. ^ Ernst Schulte-Strathaus in: Propylaea edition of Goethe's Complete Works . Edited by Conrad Höfer and Curt Noch. First supplement: The portraits of Goethe . Edited by Ernst Schulte-Strathaus, Georg Müller Verlag, Munich, 1910, p. 34 ff.
  23. ↑ Der Spiegel 36/1992 of August 31, 1992, p. 200.
  24. ^ FAZ, Die Totgesagt live again , November 16, 2011
  25. ↑ So 2011 in the exhibition "100 Masterpieces from the Städel" in the Palazzo Esposizioni Rome.
  26. ^ R. Klöckener in Kindler's Painting Lexicon . Munich 1976, vol. 12 p. 23
  27. ^ Claudia Nordhoff: Casa di Goethe. Inventory catalog. With a foreword by Maria Gazzetti. Ed .: Casa di Goethe. Rome 2017.