Painted in the years of his full artistic maturity, this painting is one of the most successful results of Vincenzo Camuccini’s portraiture. The sitter is the Prussian artist August Grahl (Poppentin-Mecklemburg, 1791-Dresden, 1868), famous throughout Europe at the time for his execution of refined miniature portraits; this work was executed in Rome, the city where Grahl resided between 1823 and 1830.

Born in north-eastern Prussia to the jeweller of the Prussian court, Grahl went on to train at the Berlin Academy, where he attended painting courses from 1811 to 1813, only to abandon his studies and join the famous Black Hussars of General Ludwig Adolf Wilhelm von Lützow, formed by volunteers engaged in guerilla actions against the Napoleonic army. Discharged with the rank of officer, Grahl was commissioned to paint the portrait of King Frederick William III for a public building in Prussia (work not traced). In 1817, he embarked on a journey that took him to Milan, Florence and Rome and consolidated his fame by painting miniatures of important personalities of the time, including Hortense de Beauharnais, Infanta Maria Cristina of Spain, and other members of European royal families. After the premature death of his first wife, in 1821, Grahl undertook new journeys to Vienna, Venice, Bologna, and Florence, and in 1823 he arrived in Rome, a city where he would remain until 1830, becoming part of the large colony of artists from all over Europe who, in the first decades of the 19th century, had chosen to spend there a period of their lives. The extraordinary heritage of the classical world that characterized the capital of the Papal States still exerted, for a good part of the 19th century, a powerful attraction on artists and intellectuals alike, making the Eternal City a place of enormous international exuberance. In Rome, Grahl stayed at Palazzo Caffarelli on the Capitoline Hill, a meeting point for the large German community and the residence of the then Prussian consul, the philologist Christian Karl Josias von Bunsen.

The lively environment frequented by Grahl in those years exudes from the many portraits produced by the Prussian painter of artists and other personalities gravitating around that circle: in addition to Von Bunsen himself, he depicted Margherita Prunetti, wife of the painter Franz Ludwig Catel, whose salon in Piazza di Spagna the miniaturist frequently visited (Rome, Pio Istituto Catel); the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the diplomat August Kestner, the writer Caroline von Humboldt, wife of the linguist and diplomat Wilhelm, as well as two of the favourite subjects of Nordic artists in Rome: Bertel Thorvaldsen and the famous model Vittoria Caldoni. Grahl also became friends with the painter Wilhelm Hensel, who left us a quick pencil sketch of the artist, drawn in 1828 in the diary of Auguste Charlotte von Kielmannsegge, (Spreewald-Museum, Lübbenau), another German noblewoman portrayed that same year by Grahl (oil on ivory; it too in the Spreewald-Museum of Lübbenau). From around 1830, there are also portraits of Felix Mendelssohn, who was travelling around Italy, and of his sister Rebecka, which may have been made after Grahl’s return to his homeland, however.

In 1828, Grahl participated in the exhibition of German artists held at Palazzo Caffarelli, where he showed two portraits on canvas and eight miniatures (Nippold, 1868, vol. I, p. 536). His production, in fact, was not limited to miniatures, in which his chosen medium was often ivory, but included paintings on canvas, arguably the most famous of which is the portrait of the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen, painted in 1846 (H. C. Andersens Museum, Odense).

The portrait presented here therefore lies outside this circle of strict Nordic ancestry in which Grahl seems to have moved almost exclusively during his long stay in Rome, and constitutes a rare indication of Vincenzo Camuccini’s link with the environment of German artists. An environment in which purist tendencies and romantic ferments were maturing in opposition to the conservative academic currents, of which Camuccini was one of the most illustrious exponents. The conflicting artistic visions, however, had no bearing on his personal relationships. The acquaintance between some German artists and Camuccini is attested, for example, in Schinkel’s diary, while visiting Rome in 1824. The architect recalls some evenings spent with Camuccini, including a sumptuous dinner held on 31th August of that year at the home of Count Ingenheim, at which, along with Thorvaldsen, Bunsen, Hensel and Klöber, Grahl and Camuccini were also present. (Schinkel [1824] 1979, pp. 179, 226). Our portrait may have been painted during the last years of Grahl’s stay; in the autograph list of works executed by Camuccini after 1824, the painting («ritratto di M. Gral Prussiano in mezza figura») is listed between the Judith painted for the town of Alzano Lombardo, completed in 1828, and St. Francis of Paola Resuscitates a Dead Man, painted for the Neapolitan basilica of the same name and completed in 1830 (Vincenzo Camuccini 1978, p. 102, No. 13; Falconieri incorrectly mentioned a “Mons. Grall” [sic], p. 227).

Camuccini, twenty years older than Grahl, was at the height of his fame in the 1820s and was one of the most prestigious figures on the Roman Fine Arts scene, also because of the numerous public offices assigned to him by the papal administration. An heir to the great classical and Renaissance tradition, he based his art on a perfection in drawing, a careful and balanced study of composition, a thoughtful choice of subjects taken from ancient history, sacred texts and classical mythology, with deliberately refined results.

It is therefore likely that the creation of this painting arose in the context of a friendship and it cannot be ruled out that there was an agreement similar to the one that existed between Camuccini and Thorvaldsen, who, twenty years earlier, had decided to create portraits of each other (Canova Thorvaldsen 2020, p. 348). The portrait of Thorvaldsen, painted by Camuccini around 1808, is unanimously considered one of his best, for its casual pose, free from the constraints of an official portrait, alongside a lack of distinctive signs of the profession, the decisive rendering of the sitter’s personality, and the rapid and fluid brushstrokes, elements which hint at an informal context and are also mirrored in Grahl’s portrait.

Schinkel, Karl Friedrich Reisen nach Italien [1824] (edited by G. Riemann), Berlin 1979.

Nippold, Friedrich Christian Carl Josias Freiherr von Bunsen. Aus seinen Briefen und nach eigener Erinnerung geschildert von seiner Witwe, Leipzig 1868-71, 3 vols.

Falconieri, Carlo Vita di Vincenzo Camuccini e pochi studi sulla pittura contemporanea, Rome 1875, p. 227.

Ojetti, Ugo (editor) Mostra del Ritratto Italiano dalla fine del secolo XVI all’anno 1861, exhibition catalogue (Florence, Palazzo Vecchio, March - July 1911), Florence 1911, p. 112, fig. 27.

Thieme, Ulrich-Becker, Felix Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler, ad vocem Grahl, August, Leipzig 1921, vol. XIV, pp. 493-94, with previous bibliography.

Sixteenth International Art Exhibition of the City of Venice, exhibition catalogue, Venice 1928, p. 34, no. 36.

Ojetti, Ugo La pittura italiana dell’Ottocento, Milan/Rome 1929, plate 34.

Ojetti, Ulrich The Paintings of Vincenzo Camuccini, 1771-1844, in “The Art Bulletin”, 60, 1979, p. 319.

Vincenzo Camuccini (1771-1844). Sketches and drawings from the artist’s studio, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, October-December 1978), edited by Giovanna Piantoni de Angelis, Rome 1978.

Susinno, Stefano La pittura a Roma nella prima metà dell’Ottocento, in La pittura in Italia, Milan 1991, vol. 1, p. 417, fig. 600; 2 vols., Milan 1991, I, pp. 399-430.

Franz Ludwig Catel e i suoi amici a Roma. Un album di disegni dell’Ottocento, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, October 1996 – January 1997) edited by Elena di Majo, Rome 1996.

Verdone, Luca Vincenzo Camuccini pittore neoclassico, Rome 2005.

Canova Thorvaldsen. La nascita della scultura moderna, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Gallerie d’Italia, October 2019 – March 2020), edited by S. Grandesso and F. Mazzocca, Milan 2019.