Carl Blechen, 'The Capuchin Convent at Amalfi', about 1829

In the late sixteenth century, monks of the Capuchin order founded a monastery overlooking the sea and the trading port of Amalfi close to Naples. However, they were forced to leave in 1813, and when this sketch was produced in about 1829, the former monastery was run as a hostel.

Throughout the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth, Italy was a popular and influential destination for travellers. It was particularly attractive for artists who wanted to capture the feel of classical greatness and the works of the old masters. Artists from across Europe visited Italy in search of striking scenes for their works. The Capuchin Convent was a favoured subject. Artists recorded the view from the friary down to the sea as well as up to the monastery from the beach, as seen here.

In the summer of 1829, the German artist Carl Blechen explored the Amalfi coast, painting prodigiously. Blechen did not immediately embark on a career as an artist. He had been forced to leave school early when his parents could no longer pay his fees and he was apprenticed to a banker. After seven years in finance, at the age of 24 he gave up his banking career to devote himself to painting. He travelled to Italy in 1828 and remained for 13 months. He initially focused on Rome and the surrounding area, known as the Campagna, before moving south towards Naples. While in Rome he stayed with a German artists’ colony. He made many friends who would be important to his career after he returned to Germany.

Blechen’s Italian journey had a profound impact on him. He worked outdoors, producing a vast number of animated and vivid oil sketches. These sketches would form the foundation for a move towards greater freedom in his handling of paint and increased sensitivity to changes in light and shadow in his finished oils. This work would have been made outside in front of the scene, with Blechin painting rapidly to capture the effects of the light. There are pinholes in the four corners of the paper, showing that he attached it to a board.

Blechen has recorded the heat and the light of southern Italy. His handling of the sky is expressive and free. The sea can be glimpsed at the bottom left of the work, but there are no waves and little movement in the water. The restrained, light colour palette conjures the feeling of the arid landscape. The path up to the Convent begins to the right of the composition, through a tunnel under a massive rock. The path was so steep that visitors could choose to be carried by porters while sitting in a sedan chair. The Convent nestles in the cliff next to a large cave, perhaps the same cave that appears in Blechen’s Grotto with Two Monks at the Gulf of Naples (Wallraf-Richartz Museum and Fondation Corboud, Cologne). There are no people in Blechen’s painting, giving it a timeless atmosphere.