"A View of Naples through a Window", Franz Ludwig Catel NFT on XRPL

"A View of Naples through a Window", Franz Ludwig Catel

Collection: Cleveland Originals

Franz Ludwig Catel worked in Rome and later traveled south to Naples. This painting presents that city´s most distinctive attraction: Mount Vesuvius, an active volcano that appears against an otherwise calm sky. Catel portrayed the scene from within a hotel room, contrasting the potentially overwhelming force of nature with the illusion of protection offered by distance and enclosed space."fun_fact": "Mount Vesuvius was almost continuously active at the time that Franz Ludwig Catel visited Naples, and erupted just two years before this painting was completed." Artist Bio: Franz Ludwig Catel, known as François Louis Catel in its French form, was born on February 22, 1778, in Berlin, and died on December 19, 1856, in Rome. He was a Prussian painter, designer, and illustrator, active in the Italian states. Descended from a French-speaking dynasty of Huguenot refugees from the French colony of Prussia, he was the youngest son of Pierre-Frédéric Catel, a hardware merchant, toy and fan manufacturer, and advisor to the French court in Berlin, and Elisabeth Wilhelmine Rousset. His older brother Louis Catel (1776-1819) was a talented and recognized architect. Franz Ludwig Catel, trained as a wood carver, studied with Daniel Chodowiecki and attended the Academy of Arts in Berlin in 1797. He began his artistic production by drawing vignettes for almanacs and illustrated publications. He was introduced by Karl August Böttiger to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in May 1797, while the poet was seeking an available illustrator to entrust the image of his epic poem "Hermann et Dorothée". The engravings made by Chodowiecki from the drawings provided by Catel in honor of this prestigious commission, published in Brunswick in 1799 by the Vieweg publishing house, are the young artist's first notable work and give him a start to his notoriety. In 1798, Franz Ludwig and his brother visited Switzerland and stayed in Paris, where the young man was admitted as a student at the Academy of Fine Arts on the recommendation of Jean-Antoine Houdon. He remained enrolled there for six semesters, during which he completed his artistic training. Returning to Berlin, in 1801 he married the daughter of an embroiderer, Sophie Friedrike Kolbe, and with his brother, he established a factory for plaster or marble stucco. In 1802, he exhibited watercolor landscapes in Weimar that were praised by Goethe. He then contributed to the interior design arrangements made by his brother in the Stadtschloss in Potsdam. In 1805, he illustrated the new edition of "L'Homme des champs," or the French Georgics by Abbé Jacques Delille, published in Paris by Levrault, Schoell et Cie. He also produced a series of watercolors for the collection "Verzierungen aus dem Alterthume," published in a collection from 1805 to 1809 by the engraver-lithographer Ernst Friedrich Bussler. Perfecting his practice of Indian ink and watercolor, Franz Ludwig Catel composed in 1806 a large scene representing the murder of the provost Nicolas de Bernau in Berlin in 1325, which earned him membership in the Berlin Academy of Arts on November 23, 1806. Starting from 1807, he returned to Paris to study oil painting. In 1811, he settled in Rome, where he arrived on October 28. He made illustrations for a new edition of the translation of "L'Aeneide" by Annibal Caro. In 1812, Catel was hired by the French archaeologist Aubin-Louis Millin de Grandmaison to draw the monuments and sites visited during the latter's trip to Naples, Campania, Calabria, and Abruzzo, in which Astolphe de Custine was also his traveling companion. Some of the sketches made by Catel for his commissioner were engraved by Ludwig Friedrich Kaiser and published on plates in a work on Pompeii. In addition, 172 pen and ink drawings, preserved in Millin's "Voyage en Italie" collection, acquired by the National Library of France, can be attributed to Catel's hand. They illustrate various themes: landscapes, monuments, works of art, and popular costumes. A widower since 1810, the painter remarried in Rome in 1814 with Margherita Prunelli. The couple lived in Rome at Piazza di Spagna. In 1818, Catel accompanied Prince and Princess Galitzine on their trip to visit Sicily. Seduced by the landscapes and light of his new country to the point of declining an offer of appointment as a drawing teacher at the Academy of Arts in Berlin in 1826, he spent the rest of his life in Italy. There, he quickly acquired a reputation as a respected artist. His pictorial production was highly successful among art lovers and collectors. A pillar of the German colony in Rome, his company was particularly sought after by travelers from Germany, including Crown Prince Louis of Bavaria, whom he accompanied on a trip to Greece and immortalized in a famous "bambochade" scene. In the Spanish inn in Rome, Duke Frederick IV of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, and Prince Henry of Prussia. Converted to Catholicism since his second marriage, Franz Ludwig Catel is buried in the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome, where his remains rest under a funerary monument with his effigy sculpted by his compatriot Julius Troschel. The commercial success of his paintings allowed him to accumulate a comfortable fortune of 80,000 crowns. Since he died childless, he bequeathed his inheritance to the creation of a private fund to help needy German and Italian artists living in Rome. His legacy took the definitive form of a foundation called the Pio Istituto Catel, established in 1887 and placed under the patronage of the German Embassy in Rome. Still in existence, the charitable organization grants scholarships and accommodates interns in its facilities according to the criteria defined by its benefactor. Works First an illustrator and then a watercolorist before finally opting, when maturity came, for oil painting, Franz Ludwig Catel essentially made a name for himself as a landscape painter. However, his range of inspiration is broader: he also composed genre scenes (with rustic, musical, or domestic themes), seascapes, and some historical paintings, of which we specifically mention "The Emperor Rudolf Riding a Horse Leading a Priest Carrying the Blessed Sacrament" and "The Resurrection of Christ," canvases intended for the church of Berlin-Charlottenburg. Technically, his brushwork is marked by a neoclassical vision of architectural masses and the composition of reliefs, showing a preference for mountain and sea landscapes. His color palette expresses a luminous style, influenced by Romanticism.

Issuer: rLzncbwKysPuA9FvrocUKBZUbQGiBBPNk3

Taxon: 2

• technique : oil on paper, mounted on canvas
• culture : Germany, 19th century
• creation date : 1824
• artist: Franz Ludwig Catel
• px: 2412 x 3400

NFTokenID: 00081770DB35F371D4D6B9E351DA0CF20D4EBF5F49F78DB9FC612146042C1EA9

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