Valley by Amalfi with a view over Salerno Bay

Valley by Amalfi with a view over Salerno Bay is among Richter's earliest surviving Italian canvases, painted in 1826 during his residence at Rome and his excursions along the southern coast. The Amalfi Coast had begun attracting German painters by the 1820s as an alternative to the more thoroughly documented Roman Campagna — steeper, more dramatically vertical than the pastoral plains near Rome, and dotted with medieval towns clinging to cliffs above the sea. Richter made his way south in the company of other German artists, filling sketchbooks with topographical observations that he later worked up into finished canvases. This early work, now at the Museum der bildenden Künste in Leipzig, shows the young artist still negotiating between precise topographical description and the atmospheric freedom of Romantic landscape. The view over Salerno Bay offered a sweeping panorama that few European coastal prospects could match, and Richter captures the specific quality of southern Italian light — harder and more insistent than anything northern Europe provided.

The young Richter handles the vertical drama of the Amalfi cliffs with careful attention to geological structure, layering cool greys and warm ochres to describe rock strata. The sea in the distance is handled with looser, more liquid brushwork. Compositional depth is achieved through overlapping ridges and the hazy atmosphere above the bay.