Jakob Phillipp Hackert was Prussian from Prenzlau where he was born on 15th of September 1737. He started painting with his father and then moved to Berlin where, after a period spent at his uncle’s workshop, he attended the Academy of Fine Arts and courses which led him to landscape paintings.
With this “speci
alisation”, he started travelling to Europe and in 1766 he arrived in Paris, where his older brother, who was a painter too, joined him. Two years later, already well-known and appreciated for his paintings, he moved to Italy, first to Genoa and then to Livorno, Pisa, Florence and Rome, where he painted landscapes which were meeting the growing satisfaction of important commissions and noble travelers of the Grand Tour. When he went back to Rome between his frequent trips down to the Peninsula, a series of paintings were ordered for Catherine II. Therefore, Hackert had a good reputation in Europe when he went to Naples in 1782, introduced to king Ferdinand IV by the Russian ambassador. The king commissioned the first works of a long series and, in 1786, he nominated Hackert a court painter. He painted works for all the royal residences, being inspired by his frequent trips in every part of the kingdom. He is the one who dealt with the transfer of other works from Rome to Naples of the Farnese collection inherited by Ferdinand. In Naples, he met and became friend with Goethe, who would have then become his biographer. He tirelessly worked until 1799 when he had to leave Naples after the arrival of the French. He moved to Tuscany. He died in Careggi the 9th of May 1807.
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