Mendelssohn, the painter
Mendelssohn Amalfi


Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Landscape of the Amalfi Coast, watercolour on paper

One of Mendelssohn’s most attractive landscapes, based on a pencil sketch now in the Bodleian Library, dated Amalfi, 31 May 1831. The watercolour differs in many details from the pencil sketch, the latter being transformed from a visual record to a work of art. The Capuchin monastery (centre of the picture), which had been an inn since 1821, is where the composer stayed during his only visit to Amalfi, in 1831. A pencil sketch of the view looking down from the monastery survives, in private hands, from which Mendelssohn made two watercolour versions, one of which, dating from 1836, is also in the Bodleian Library.

Lot sold at Sotheby’s for GBP 25,000.

Music and Continental Books & Manuscripts, June 2011 www.sothebys.com
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