The Waterfalls of Tivoli, 1817

About the Work

Goethe called it one of the "first natural spectacles": in view of its spectacular location and the dramatic waterfalls, Tivoli was famous even in antiquity. It exerted a magical attraction over artists. The German artist Carl Philipp Fohr, who had hiked across the Alps to Rome in 1816, was also deeply impressed by the beauty of the setting. In his main work, which was created in the studio of Joseph Anton Koch, he enhanced the varied landscape with local peasants and a mendicant monk on a pilgrimage. Fohr, who was regarded as one of the most talented artists of German Romanticism, drowned in the Tiber at the age of only twenty-two.