Crown Prince Ludwig in the Spanish Wine Tavern in Rome
by CATEL, Franz Ludwig, Oil on canvas, 63 x 76 cm
The scene in the tavern illustrates an aspect of life of the German artists in Rome. Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria was a patron of the arts, and here we see him seated with the artists, calling the landlord. The painter wrote in 1824: “I recently finished a small Bamboccia painting for the Crown Prince of Bavaria.. His Royal Highness graciously organized a small dinner at Don Raffaele’s on the Ripa Grande to bid farewell to von Klenze, and he asked me to immortalize the scene with my brush.”
The artists are sitting in a tavern opposite Mount Aventine, and Catel listed the men he has portrayed in a letter: the Crown Prince gesturing to the landlord, beside him Berthel Thorvaldsen, the architect Leo van Klenze, Johann Martin Wagner, who was in Rome to buy antique figures for Munich’s collection, then Philipp Veit, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld and Catel himself.