The Large harbor on Capri island 1828

Sylvester Shchedrin painted ‘The Large Harbor on Capri Island’ on canvas, sometime in the 1820s. Here we see the bay of Capri, Italy, in the artistic style of the Russian academy. To understand the image, it’s important to think about the system of patronage through which Shchedrin, a Russian artist, came to be in Italy in the first place. In 1818, he received a grant from the Imperial Academy of Arts to travel abroad to study and practice painting. The work offers a romanticized and picturesque view of Italian life, in line with the expectations of his patron. We see local people relaxing by the harbor, while the landscape itself is bathed in a warm light. The painting thus reinforces an image of Italy as an idyllic destination, a place of leisure and beauty. To dig deeper, one could investigate travel patterns and artistic patronage of the time. What was Capri like in the 1820s? How did Russian artists interact with the artistic and social scene in Italy? The answers to such questions give us a much richer sense of the painting’s cultural and historical meaning.