Small watercolor on paper depicting a view of the Tiber river at the height of Ponte Sisto seen from south toward St. Peter, before the construction of the embankments started after 1870.

Antique frame from the early 20th century

Dimensions 21 x 31 cm

Signed lower right Jul. Zielcke Rom

Excellent condition commensurate with age.

Julius Zielcke (Gdansk, Poland 1826 - Rome 1907) - When he arrived in Rome in 1852 in the company of the poet Victor von Schefferl, Zielcke was so impressed by Rome and its inhabitants that he never left, completely integrating into the life of the city. He lived in the city center, in Via dei Greci 3, next to the convent of Greek-Catholic monks, having rented a room with a view of the convent's garden by the Cerasi sisters, professional landlords. He frequents the Osteria Fiorelli in Via delle Colonnette, often at lunch with the German volcanologist Immanuel Friedlander, whose mother, resident in Berlin, was a kind of patron of the painter, so much that many paintings produced by the artist were sent to Berlin . As a man of small stature, thin, with pungent eyes and small shoulders, gray hair combed the old way, curled and full of ointment, led a rather modest existence, receiving few selected people. Among the few friends the writer and poet Domenico Gnoli and the neurologist Prof. Magazzini. Zielcke is above all a painter of landscapes, romantic, pure and full of poetry. In his paintings, both oil and watercolor, technique in which he is a master, and in his drawings usually depicts Rome, its surroundings, Naples, Capri, Sicily and sometimes the places of northern Italy. He is now a senior citizen at the German Hospital, where he died on 23 February 1907, a solitary man without heirs and the following year his assets were auctioned in an empty warehouse in Via Ripetta 69, and most of the works by Julius Zielcke was awarded to the painter Attilio Simonetti and to the antiquarian Louis Kempner.