Lot 2 Dα

Rome held a very special significance for Leo von Klenze. His work as an architect would have been inconceivable without precise knowledge of the classical models, for the acquisition of which the study of these buildings in situ in drawings and paintings was indispensable. He travelled to this crucial city together with his most important mentor, Crown Prince Ludwig, the future Ludwig I of Bavaria. These meetings in Rome were not purely for work purposes, but also gave the prince and the architect ample time to socialise, as recorded in a famous painting by Franz Ludwig Catel that nows hangs in the Alten Pinakothek. The work shows Catel himself alongside other artists like Bertel Thorwaldsen and Julius Schnoor von Carolsfeld at a meeting arranged by Crown Prince Ludwig in honour of Leo von Klenze.

During his time in Rome, Klenze worked in a place with a less than hospitable name: the Cloaca Maxima, or main sewer of the ancient city. He has placed the entrance to this underground utilitarian construction in the centre of this work. The construction was of fundamental importance to Klenze who, as an architect, wanted to ensure the functionality of his buildings as well as their aesthetic value. For Klenze as a painter and classicist, the building demonstrates another fundamental feature: The arch is a motif that should not be underestimated in architecture. The rounded arch was used in post-Roman buildings throughout the centuries, and Klenze records this aspect of architectural history in the rounded windows above the entrace to the ancient tunnel system.

The origin of the architectural motif lay far back in the shadows of the past. The artist depicts lush vegetation that seems to slowly engulf the 6th century building, revealing the Romantic spirit that inspired Klenze as a painter just as the classical forms inspired him as an architect. Both aspects of his oeuvre combine in this view of the Cloaca Maxima.