Lot 19: FRIEDRICH WILHELM VON SCHADOW

FRIEDRICH WILHELM VON SCHADOW GERMAN 1788-1862 BILDNIS EINER SCHÖNEN RÖMERIN (AN ITALIAN BEAUTY) oil on canvas 71 by 52cm., 28 by 20½in.

Sale: Van Ham Kunstauktionen, 21 March, 1998, lot 1668
Purchased by the present owner at the above sale

Probably painted during or shortly after von Schadow's journey to Italy in 1830, this ravishing portrait of a Roman noblewoman with a flawless porcelain complexion epitomises his genius as a portraitist.

The identity of the sitter remains a mystery. However, we know that Crown Prince Ludwig, later King Ludwig I of Bavaria, was a patron of Schadow's from the time Schadow lived in Rome, and that he had commissioned at least one other portrait of the same title, which was exhibited in Berlin in 1820. Though there is no proof, the sitter bears a striking resemblance to Ludwig's favourite mistress Marianna Marquesa Florenzi (1802-70), whom Ludwig had met in Rome in 1821 and who wrote him no fewer than three thousand letters during their subsequent forty-five year friendship.

For Schadow, portraiture was the basis of all painting, and mastery of it was therefore crucial. Portraiture, more than any other genre, was the perfect vehicle for giving expression to his belief that art should be a synthesis of the real and the ideal, combining 'the profoundest thought and the fullest perfection' (J. Hübner, Schadow und seine Schule, Bonn, 1869, p. 4).

From the outset, Schadow demonstrated tremendous technical ability, ranging from the precise draughtsmanship learnt under his teacher Friedrich Weitsch at the Berlin Academy, to his enamel-like paint surfaces, clarity of composition, and uncompromising attention to detail. Yet always, underlying this perfection of execution was an idealised, lyrical interpretation of the sitter.

Schadow's style reached its apogee during and after his time spent in Italy from 1810-19. In 1810 he travelled with his elder brother Rudolf to Rome, where he fraternised with the Nazarenes and joined the Lukas Brotherhood of artists in 1813. It was in Italy that, seeing the work of the quattrocento artists at first hand, he adopted the almost Raphaelesque style for which he is best known.

In 1819 Schadow returned to Germany, teaching first at the Berlin Academy and in 1826 taking over from Peter Cornelius as director of the Düsseldorf Academy. Charming, humorous, and well read, with the 'flair of a courtier' (Düsseldorfer Kreisblatt, 11 October 1843), Schadow's elegant home became the centre of Düsseldorf's artistic and literary circles.