The Views of Mount Etna from Taormina (1843)

Due to its impressive height of more than 3,300 meters above sea level, which makes it the highest volcano in Europe, and the fact that it is one of the last active volcanos in the area, Mount Etna—or Mongibello, as locals call it—has never ceased to fascinate people since antiquity. Men of letters and artists admired in particular its imposing conical form and the wild scenery of the surrounding landscape. As a consequence, the Etna was a motif of painters and literati already long before Thomas Cole had a closer look at it toward the mid-19^th century.²⁶³

As already mentioned, Hoby and Goethe had to give up their plans to ascend the Etna. One of Cole’s proudest achievements on his second trip to Italy was reaching its summit in time for sunrise on the morning of May 10^th in 1842.²⁶⁴ Accompanied by his friend Samuel Ainsley, Cole ascended the volcano by night and arrived at its top right in time to witness the rising sun.²⁶⁵ After climbing down the volcano, the two men traveled to Taormina, where Cole made a few pencil and oil sketches of the ruins of the Graeco-Roman theater with Mount Etna in the background on May 16^th (figs. 26).²⁶⁶

These sketches and the subsequent oil paintings prove how much Cole was captivated by the spectacular site. The theater of Taormina forms a stupendous

263 As early as in 1832, Cole had already attached great interest to another active volcano in Italy, the Vesuvius near Naples. At the time, he made a few sketches from the mountain’s outline and the bay.

First View of Vesuvius, graphite pencil on off-white wove paper, 22.2 × 31.4 cm, Detroit Institute of Arts, inv. 39.565.71. Vesuvius, graphite pencil on off-white wove paper, 22.2 × 31.4 cm, Detroit Institute of Arts, inv. 39.565.72.

264 Cole, 1844, p. 110; Stebbins, 1992, p. 262.

265 Cole, 1844, p. 112; Parry, 1988, p. 270.

266 Parry, 1988, p. 271.

architectural framework for the breathtaking view of the volcano in the background.

No one described this scenery more perfectly than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

“Art has assisted Nature to build this semicircle which held the amphitheatre audience. […] The proscenium was built in a diagonal at the foot of the tiered half-circle, stretching from cliff to cliff to complete a stupendous work of Art and Nature. If one sits where the topmost spectators sat, one has to admit that no audience in any other theatre ever beheld such a view.”²⁶⁷

The ideal interaction of Art and Nature depicted here so vividly by the German writer is Cole’s theme, too. On a drawing showing the panoramic view of the theater with Mount Etna in the background, Cole notes his enthusiastic statement:

“What a magnificent site! Aetna with its eternal snows towering in the heavens—the ranges of nearer mountains—the deep romantic valley—the bay of Naxos... I have never seen anything like it. The views from Taormina certainly excel anything I have ever seen.”²⁶⁸

The right-hand side of Cole’s doubled-paged sketchbook in Detroit (Accession Number 39.406) records this drawing of the panoramic view of Mount Etna from Taormina at an elevated viewpoint (fig. 26).²⁶⁹ The drawing would be the one on which Cole’s finished painting, Mount Etna from Taormina, was based. The atmosphere expressed in the above-quoted words is reverberated in his description of Mount Etna, enclosed in an article Cole published in 1844 under the title Sicilian Scenery and Antiquities.²⁷⁰

Following his return to New York, Thomas Cole worked from his detailed

267 Goethe, 1962, p. 286.

268 Here quoted after Jones, in: The Lure of Italy, 1992, p. 262.

269 Mount Etna from Taormina, Sicily, graphite pencil on beige wove paper, 29.4 × 41.3 cm, Detroit Institute of Arts, inv. 39.406. There is another drawing of a panoramic view of Mount Etna and the town of Taormina before it by Cole on a double-paged sketchbook in Birmingham. In this drawing, Cole depicts the town of Taormina before Mount Etna without the Taormina theater. The focus of the foreground is the town of Taormina, rendered in detailed manner. Information on the Birmingham drawing is listed as follows: graphite, wash, black ink, and possibly blue watercolor on laid paper, 50.8

× 179.1 cm, Birmingham Museum of Art, inv. 1980.351.

270 Thomas Cole, “Sicilian Scenery and Antiquities,” in: The Knickerbocker, New-York Monthly Magazine 23, no. 2, February, 1844, pp. 103-113; no. 3, March, 1844, pp. 236–244, here no. 2, pp.

110–113. See also appendix no. 3.

sketches created at the site, and the drawing in particular, to produce his large-scale Mount Etna from Taormina (1843).²⁷¹ Cole painted the piece with incredible speed, completing the near two-by-three-meter painting in a short period of merely five days.²⁷² He then exhibited the work at his one-man show at the National Academy of Design in December of 1843.²⁷³ Afterwards, the painting was purchased by the newly established Wadsworth Atheneum and sent to that new gallery in Hartford once Cole’s exhibition closed.²⁷⁴

In his painting Mount Etna from Taormina of 1843 (fig. 27), Cole presents to his audience a scene of the ruined Graeco-Roman theater located before the bay by the Mediterranean under the snow-covered Mount Etna.²⁷⁵ Facing the proscenium of the Taormina theater, the spectator is able to see not only remnants of the collapsed scaenae frons, consisting of an arched brick wall and a file of both whole and broken marble columns, beyond this horizontal barrier, rolling hills, a small contemporary town and the coastline define the middle ground, whereas the volcano emerges far off in the distance.

Before the ruins of the theater, the remains of a giant column are arranged in the left corner, while another one, somewhat smaller in size, has fallen on its side near the center foreground. In front of the fallen column piece, a hooded figure in black and red, probably a rural Sicilian of Cole’s time, passes by. Tiny goats can be seen frolicking among the rubble at the large opening in the ruined theater. A small standing figure, presumably a shepherd, watches his flock from a distance under an arch on the right side of the theater stage. Comparison with photographs of the theater

271 Parry, 1988, pp. 291–292. Michael J. Lewis, “American Sublime,” in: The New Criterion, September, 2002, pp. 27–33, here pp. 28–30.

272 Parry, 1988, p. 292.

273 Ibid., pp. 292–294.

274 Ibid., pp. 295–296.

275 On the complex chronology of the theater at Taormina see Frank Sear, “The Theatre at Taormina — A New Chronology,” in: Papers of the British School at Rome 64, 1996, pp. 41–79.

taken by Giovanni Crupi (1859–1925; fig. 28) shows that the giant column was Cole’s own invention (fig. 27). Apart from the fact that it cannot be found in the photographs, it did not make sense in this architectural context.²⁷⁶ Cole obviously added it for making the ruins appear more colossal and, at the same time, the staffage figure look tinier. Furthermore, Cole applies such devices of a culture’s past eminence and grandeur as signs of transience.

Backlit by the morning sun, the surviving rear wall of the scaena, shattered from the center into two fragments, is highlighted against the illuminated middle ground and background. The arches on both of the two fragmented structures pierce each halfway through; the pair of arches, along with the gap in the center, form three

‘windows’ framing views of the scenery in the middle ground.

The middle ground is shaped by mostly land and a narrow part of the sea on the left. Divided unevenly by the winding coastline, lush green hills occupy the right picture plane, as the blue water of the Mediterranean Sea fills up the left. Part of the village of Taormina crowns a hill on the right of the picture, flaunting its red roofs under the sun.

Mount Etna, the massive snow-capped volcano, rises in the background, looming over the area. Released from the tip of the mountain, a curl of smoke is ascending into the air, gaining thickness in the sky up above.

An oil sketch for this painting was executed in the previous year, 1842 (fig. 29).

This study is a further example of Cole’s en plein air sketching process. Here he used thick, wet brushstrokes to indicate the basic composition as well as the colors and effects of light on the scene. Traces of these heavy strokes replete the study’s surface

276 Giovanni Crupi, “Greek theatre – Taormina.” Online auction catalog # 48; see

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crupi,_Giovanni_(1849-1925)_-_n._0048_-_Teatro_Greco_-_Taormina.jpg. Crupi was an Italian photographer, mostly active in Sicily in the later 19^th century; see http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/artists/2566/giovanni-crupi-italian-active-sicily-italy-1860s-1890s/

(retrieved November 16^th, 2017).

as patches of layered impasto cover the main body of the composition. In contrast, Mount Etna from Taormina was painted quickly in thin strokes resulting in scumbled layers of paint. Giving merely a general idea of the final production, the forms in the sketch work are much reduced; for instance, the column shafts of the foreground theater stage are represented with single extended brushstrokes. As the study can be read as a preliminary sketch of the more refined final piece, it is comparable for example to the 1832 oil sketches of the Aqua Claudia in the Campagna di Roma (figs. 13, 14).

While the final painting and its preliminary oil sketch share a likeness in composition, the two works depict the same site at a slightly different angle. In the 1843 painting at Hartford (fig. 27), the entire scenery is rendered from a higher standpoint further back, which gives an effect that reduces the height of the ruined theater walls and encompasses more of the structure at both ends; by comparison, the oil sketch The Ruins at Taormina (fig. 29) displays a narrower view, which makes the walls seem much taller and the openings bigger, taking up more than half the height of the whole picture. The viewpoint difference also affects the appearance of the hills in the middle ground, which seem to be steeper and massier in the oil study than in the final picture.

In the oil sketch, Cole concentrated on the general site, the theater and its topographical circumstances, while staffage figures and details of the ruins were added later in the final painting. The way Mount Etna is portrayed was modified in the final painting. In the study, a stirless volcano is partly concealed behind two separate layers of clouds. In the final painting, white snow girdles the upper half of a smoke-puffing volcano. The surface of the volcano in the painting is uneven and rocky, exhibiting more texture, while the sketched volcano is rendered quite flat and plain. Most probably, the oil sketch renders the meteorological conditions of the

moment, when the work was executed. In the final painting, however, Cole chose a more serene, idealized atmosphere.

Cole certainly depended on his oil sketch to complete the final painting, Mount Etna from Taormina of 1843 (fig. 27). The sketch functioned as an aide-mémoire for his later use, recording essential information on form, color, tone and lighting in nature observed by the artist. Cole first used light pencil lines to begin the sketch, determining the levels of cloudage while outlining the volcano.²⁷⁷ As the oil sketch’s wet-on-wet surface reveals, Cole depicted the forms with speed, adding small amounts of intensification later when the surface layer had dried.²⁷⁸ In order to make the oil sketch on site, Cole had with him a handy device—a sketch box. Eleanor Jones Harvey introduces Cole’s portable sketch box in her exhibition catalog The Painted Sketch. This useful container was invented to keep the artist’s paints, brushes, palette and other sketching tools within for traveling.²⁷⁹ It would be likely that Cole brought his sketch box outdoors with him to work on his plein-air study, rapidly putting down the Sicilian scenery he saw in paint; then after returning to New York, the artist developed his large-scale canvas in the studio from his sketch work, with slight arrangements and additional figural details. Resulting from the oil sketch, the final production shares the same effects of recorded natural conditions as the sketch work, a preparatory study that allowed Cole to create a finished painting of heightened verisimilitude.

Bearing much in common, Cole’s choice of perspective for the final version of Mount Etna from Taormina was probably influenced by View of Aetna from the Theatre at Taormina, an engraving by Robert Wallis (1794–1878) after a drawing by

277 Harvey, 1998, p. 122.

278 Ibid.

279 Ibid., p. 120.

Peter DeWint (1784–1849) of 1822 (fig. 30).²⁸⁰ This engraved work was published in DeWint’s 1823 book, Sicilian Scenery.²⁸¹ Containing a series of engraved depictions of Sicilian landscape and architectural monuments accompanied by descriptions, DeWint’s work was probably one of Cole’s references for planning his European itinerary, exposing the American artist to a pictorial precedent of the setting. It is also significant that, some ten years later, Cole published his own description of Sicily nearly under the same title, Sicilian Scenery and Antiquities.²⁸²

Similar in arrangement, Cole’s painting and DeWint’s engraving show the classical panoramic view from Taormina with Mount Etna in the background. In both works, the foreground view is dominated by the ruinous theater stage with its large central gap and two lateral arches. The remaining parts of the theater are given in a rather similar way in the two works, except for some small, but significant differences. The divided scaenae frons is rendered more symmetrically from Cole’s point of view, with both sides flanking the midway gap being balanced and even, while the theater wall has a higher left side in DeWint’s engraving. DeWint’s ruined theater accommodates slenderer arches and no traces of any columns compared with Cole’s image. As for details in the foreground, a goat and two groups of hatted figures appear from behind a vegetated foreground strip in DeWint’s picture, a design Cole replaced with his large broken columns and hooded Sicilian, which can be taken as a further indicator that the latter invented this motif.

Through the broken area and doorways in the theater’s scaenae frons, the audience’s vision is guided to the coastal scene behind the ruins in both views. Almost identical, the middle ground sections in Cole’s and DeWint’s work are composed of

280 Parry, 1988, p. 292.

281 Peter DeWint, Sicilian Scenery from Drawings by P. DeWint. The Original Sketches by Major Light, London: Rodwell & Martin, 1823.

282 Cole, 1844, pp. 103–113. See appendix no. 3.

the left-side Mediterranean, the in-between crooked coastline, and the right-side hilly region topped by the village of Taormina. Cole’s middle ground is vaster in depth, whereas DeWint’s middle ground is broader in width.

In both works, Mount Etna stands majestically out against the background with its base stretching towards the sea and its peak soaring above the clouds in the air, while its main body takes up most of the upper-right picture plane. The difference of the background between the two works lies in the details. The shape of Mount Etna in Cole’s painting is rather different from that in DeWint’s engraving, with the former being conical. Cole’s version of Mount Etna has a broad base which narrows gradually until reaching its uppermost peak, creating a dominant projection at the top section of the volcano, where that of DeWint’s is much flattened. The slantier, more acute form of Cole’s design brings out the conical shape of Mount Etna, a shape subtly suggesting upward movement, making the volcano seem to be rising from the horizon and soaring to the heaven above all others, allowing it to appear to be grand and magnificent.

The discrepancy between Cole’s painting and DeWint’s engraving must be explained. When comparing 19^th-century representations of this view, the great differences in the volcano’s outline are surprising. In a picture executed by the German painter Carl Anton Rottmann (1797–1850; fig. 31) in 1829/30, for example, the mountain has a flatter, more rounded silhouette, much similar to the form DeWint shows in the engraving, but very different from Cole’s view.²⁸³ Due to a series of eruptions, the volcano constantly changed its outline over time. Strangely enough, its form can vary in works of art of the same period. This fact indicates that an artist could decide what form he wanted to give to the mountain, either working after

283 Carl Anton Rottmann, Taormina with Mount Etna, probably 1829/30, oil on canvas, 48 × 72.9 cm, Neue Pinakothek, Munich, inv. WAF 845. The painting was executed after the painter’s trip to Italy in 1826/27; https://www.pinakothek.de/en/node/1794 (retrieved May 15^th, 2018).

nature, or following earlier representations, or freely inventing a form.

Cole’s volcano perhaps owes its powerful shape to an engraving, A View of Mount Aetna from Taormina, in Observations on Mount Vesuvius, Mount Etna, and Other Volcanos, a book of 1772 by Sir William Hamilton possibly seen by Cole.²⁸⁴ The way Cole rendered Mount Etna was probably meant to underline its sublimity and allude to its destructive power. “Sublime art thou O Mount!,” he exclaims in the poem.²⁸⁵ There are further basic differences in rendering the scenery: DeWint’s volcano is inactive, while Cole’s is in the moment of emitting smoke. In addition, the background skies in the two works are of different quality: Cole’s sky is relatively clear, as DeWint’s sky is cloudy. It is as if Cole wanted to stress the fact that Mount Etna was active and full of energy through contrasting the curl of volcanic smoke with his clear sky, making the smoke seem more prominent and eye-catching, thus denoting the volcano’s sublimity. The pureness of Cole’s sky is also hinting at his idea of the sublime. Cole sees the pure blue sky as the highest sublime, for in his own words he once wrote: “In the pure blue sky is the highest sublime. There is the illimitable […]. There we look into the uncurtained, solemn serene—into the eternal, the infinite—toward the throne of the Almighty.”²⁸⁶ With pathetic rhetoric, Cole interprets here the serene sky in terms of religious significance. The sky’s sublime quality lies in its referring to the infinity of eternal life.

Besides small adjustments made in the details which differ, Cole’s painting and DeWint’s engraving are basically look-alikes. Both Cole and DeWint chose to present the theater’s gap at the center foreground, an arrangement leading to the scenery behind. In addition, both depictions show the site at the same time of day, letting the sunlight come from the left side. Judging from the layout closeness of the two works

284 Parry, 1988, p. 292.

285 Cole, 1842, 5, 43. See appendix no. 2.

286 Thomas Cole (September 4^th, 1847), quoted here after Noble, 1856, p. 376.

and considering the fact that Cole finished his picture in such a short time, it is imaginable that Cole referred to DeWint’s engraving, or at least he had seen the engraved image beforehand.

Cole created a reduced replica of his 1843 painting, also titled Mount Etna from Taormina, in the following year.²⁸⁷ According to Parry, the only source on this replica of Cole’s at present, Mount Etna from Taormina of 1844 was originally titled View of

Cole created a reduced replica of his 1843 painting, also titled Mount Etna from Taormina, in the following year.²⁸⁷ According to Parry, the only source on this replica of Cole’s at present, Mount Etna from Taormina of 1844 was originally titled View of