Campagna-Landschaft bei heraufziehendem Unwetter 1876

Heinrich Funk made this landscape drawing of the Campagna with graphite. The Campagna was the agrarian region surrounding Rome, in Italy, a popular destination for Northern European artists in the 19th century. Funk was German and trained at the Düsseldorf Academy. Like other artists associated with the institution, he shows an interest in atmospheric and topographical accuracy, rendering a landscape that also speaks to the hardships of rural existence. In the foreground, peasants are making their way along a dusty road. Heavy clouds overhead may be read as a metaphor for the socio-economic conditions of the Italian rural poor. Funk's drawing invites us to consider how a romanticized vision of the Italian countryside was often at odds with the realities of life there. Scholars of nineteenth-century art are attuned to the way institutions like the Düsseldorf Academy shaped artists' perspectives, their aesthetic choices, and how those choices intersect with broader social and political contexts.