Goethe in the Campagna

I have posted on this subject before, indeed a decade ago, but one of my domestic tasks in the present lockdown has been to go through my filing cabinet and create some order. Obviously I have a huge Goethe file, and I have selected some items out for this blog. I would like to add one detail on the charming sketch above by Tischbein (as always, click to enlarge) that I overlooked in my earlier post (2009!).

The 2009 post concerned the drawing's acquisition by the Freies Deutsches Hochstift and the information it added to the gestation of Tischbein's iconic portrait of Goethe in the Campagna. Judging by the gesture of the left hand and by the attentive position of the other figures, Goethe is apparently imparting some story, while his hat and his coat suggest the motif of Der Wanderer. It was this hat that caught my attention this morning. I might be mistaken -- and if so I hope someone will correct me -- but I can't recall any other representation of Goethe with a hat on. Certainly he wore a hat; people -- men and women -- wore hats in those days.

In the Tischbein portrait Goethe wears a hat, but it is not the hat of a "wanderer." It resembles more closely the hat worn by Nicholaes Berchem (1620-1683), a painter of pastoral landscapes. I mention Berchem only because he is referenced in the Bersani article I quoted in the earlier post as a source of the pastoral imagery in the portrait. The above image of Berchem is by Jan Stolker (d. 1785), a near contemporary of Tischbein. Maybe Tischbein was referring to the Dutch Golden Age? I'm not an art historian and welcome any enlightening on this particular sartorial style, especially in the portrait of Goethe.