Gerd Spitzer: Ludwig Richter’s Italian Diaries, 1824–1826

Description

Ludwig Richter’s diaries from his stay in Italy from 1823 to 1826 have never before been published in their entirety. This edition is based on a precise transcription of the artist’s handwritten notes, supplemented with detailed commentary. These authentic sources provide extensive insight into Richter’s artistic views and plans at that time, and they fully illuminate the painter’s later transition to illustration and printmaking in all its decisive significance. Furthermore, Richter’s personal notes convey a multifaceted picture of artistic life in Rome during that period. In contrast to the artist’s widely read memoirs, this volume presents contemporary accounts that correspond to the actual facts and are thus entirely credible, allowing for a reliable assessment of the young artist’s development during his early years. Richter’s later memoirs, on the other hand, are a deliberately literary self-portrayal intended for posterity, in which certain details were intentionally altered because the artist sought to convey general ethical and moral lessons through the description of his own life story. In any case, the diaries are of inestimable importance as a reliable source for reconstructing the course of his life. Richter himself used them as working material for writing his life story.

In addition to the commentary on the transcribed texts, a detailed biographical overview of Ludwig Richter’s years in Italy, as well as a catalog of the oil paintings he planned and executed during that time, vividly illustrate the artist’s three-year stay, which was of singular importance for the rest of his life.