Given its quality and subject matter, this remarkable drawing can be traced back to the Neapolitan activity of the great protagonist of Neoclassicism, the German painter Joahann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, famous for his monumental Portrait of Goethe in the Roman Countryside, painted in 1787, a masterpiece that became a symbol of the Grand Tour. During the years spent in Naples from 1787 to 1799 as director of the Academy of Fine Arts, he worked for the Bourbon court and for travelers on the Grand Tour, and had a special relationship with the English ambassador, a great patron and collector, William Hamilton, whom he described in his Memoirs as "a great protector and friend." For him, he executed a series of portraits in mythological guise of his second wife, Emma Lyon, Lady Hamilton, who became renowned for her performances in which she transformed into characters from mythology and the ancient world. In this drawing, which can be compared in terms of the identification of the sitter and the attitude with the beautiful portrait of Emma as Sibyl from 1788 preserved at the Klassiz Stiftung Museen in Weimar (Sir William and Lady Hamilton , exhibition catalogue – Naples, Gallerie d'Italia, 25 October 2024 – 2 March 2025 – edited by F. Leone and F. Mazzocca, Milan, Skira, 2024, p. 138), the woman appears thoughtfully seated next to an ancient altar, wrapped in a tunic with wide pleats that also covers her head, therefore dressed and posed like a vestal virgin. The work should be placed in relation to the typical "attitudes", documented in various graphic series, in which Lady Hamilton exhibited herself in public, for which she aroused great sensation and widespread admiration, as in the case of Goethe, who dedicated some beautiful pages to her in his Italian Journey.

Fernando Mazzocca