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ADOLPH von MENZEL
Breslau 1815 ~ 1905 Berlin
Adolf von Menzel had made brief summer visits to northen Italy
in 1881, 1882 and 1883, staying each time at Verona. On his second
trip he conceived the idea of making an oil of the famous Piazza
d’Erbe with the market in full swing. This work, Marketplace
in Verona, after numerous preparatory drawings, was finally
finished in 1884.
However, as is evident from our sheet, he also spent time drawing
views elsewhere in the city at this time. Our sheet is a fine
example of his bold approach to landscape or cityscape. The viewpoint
is high and gives the impression that the artist is standing on
a balcony above the city and using his binoculars to attain the
distant view of roof tops, and beyond, the River Adige to the
far left and the church towers to its right. He also uses the
familiar device of taking your eye down a steep avenue or path
towards a small gate serving as an ‘exit’ from the foreground
space. The small group of people approaching the gate underline
this purpose. The effect of the plunge downhill is countered by
the tall cyprus trees, rising to different heights, very near
the viewer. We look down on some of the trees but up to the very
tall ones on our left. It is as if Menzel is making a conscious
effort to give us the effect of ‘lived perspective’ by pulling
our eye back and forth in this dramatic manner.1 Another very
good example of this approach to urban landscape is the oil of
Garden of Prince Albert’s Palace,2 largely painted in 1846
but modified and completed thirty years later - at a date much
closer to our drawing. Other drawings evoke the same feeling of
the art’s presence in the scene by introducing an upward slope
in the foreground.
Apart from his play with perspective, we are keenly aware in our
sheet of the remarkable strength of the sunlight playing through
the trees and over the roofs of the buildings beyond. An effect
that is particularly impressive when we think that it is described
in black chalk on white paper. Finally, as is again typical, we
are not being given a postcard overview of the city but a large
detail of the same. For example, the long, sunlit building beyond
the gate is the nave of a church with only a hint of bell tower
on the extreme right edge of the sketch-book page.
1.
Michael Fried, Menzel’s Realism, Art and Embodiment in Nineteenth-Century
Berlin, New Haven and London, 2002, p.23.
2. M. Fried, op.cit. p.21, fig. 5.
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