Olevano Romano and the Invention of German Art, 1800-1830

Golo Maurer

The significance of the German painters in Olevano in terms of art and cultural history cannot be explained by their artistic status. Measured by international standards and compared above all with the contemporary scene in France, this was second-rate at best. In most cases, they had come to Italy as self-taught artists; very few of them had any technical or academic training. The interesting thing is that they did not see this as a shortcoming at all, but on the contrary proudly set themselves apart from their French colleagues, who – equipped with materials and skills – often painted directly in oil on canvas. This deliberate demarcation – the German painters called it ‘truth’ as opposed to ‘effect’ – and the close cohesion that they cultivated over many years established an artistic practice that can be described as the ‘invention of German art’, namely an art that consciously differed from contemporary models in terms of its favored genre (i.e., landscape and not history), style (drawing and not painting) and subject matter (Olevano, Olevano, and yet more Olevano). The French, English and Italians were no longer seen as role models, as they had been in the 18th century, but as competitors from whom the Germans consciously set themselves apart by avowing a different set of ideological premises.
It is no coincidence that this ‘reflection’ on the ‘German’ – which was also passed off as a ‘return to the past’ in deference to nostalgic medievalisms – took place in the years following the Wars of Liberation. These were a veritable catalyst for everything to do with the nation and national sentiment. What had been at best a marginal theme for the generation of artists led by Reinhardt, Dies or Mechau in the late 18th century now became the central ideology for art and life. In this respect, the German artists’ colony was a continuation of fraternity life and the pre-March era transplanted to the Italian provinces and fueled by patriotic encouragement from patrons such as King Ludwig I of Bavaria, who provided the artists with the funds to purchase a “German Dress”.
Like many utopias, that of the German artists’ republic in the Sabine Mountains was ultimately doomed to failure. The idea of finding an intact, stagnant, prehistoric world beyond modernity, civilization, and progress and being able to inhabit it permanently was a pipe dream from the moment this world was discovered, not least because its own presence stood in the way. Ths the fundamental  dilemma of all dropouts and paradise dwellers: in paradises all paths lead only to the exit, and it is only with the exit in mind that one recognizes paradise as such. The attempts to acquire a right to stay in this paradise against all paradise-house rules, to put down roots and settle in are a leitmotif throughout the history of the German presence in Olevano. Over the decades, different strategies were used. Perhaps the most pragmatic, the notarized acquisition of a parcel of paradise land in the late 19th century and thus the state institutionalization of a myth, forms its natural end point.