View of Villa Malta with St. Peter’s Basilica in the Background, 1862
Born in Hamburg, the painter and printmaker Johann Hermann Carmiencke trained in Dresden under the Norwegian landscape painter Johann Christian Dahl. Subsequently, the artist embarked on a journey that would take him first to Sweden, then Germany, and finally Italy, between 1845 and ’46, to study and draw landscapes. He was to pursue a successful career in Denmark, where he worked as King Christian VIII’s court painter from 1846 to 51, the year when war in Northern Europe obliged him to emigrate to America.