Torquato Tassos Vaterhaus in Sorrent bei Neapel

Rudolf von Alt's 1836 view of Torquato Tasso's birthplace in Sorrento, now in the Albertina, records the house where the great Renaissance epic poet was born in 1544, situating the scene within the broader Romantic cult of literary pilgrimage that sent northern Europeans to Italy in search of the places that had shaped their cultural heritage. Torquato Tasso, author of Jerusalem Delivered, was one of the most revered Italian poets in the Romantic canon; his life, including his years of confinement in Ferrara, had become a subject of literary and artistic fascination — Goethe had written a drama about him in 1790. Sorrento, on the cliff-edged peninsula south of Naples, combined its Tasso associations with spectacular natural scenery: the Bay of Naples, Vesuvius in the distance, and the Mediterranean light that made the area a magnet for Romantic travellers. Alt painted this work during his first extended Italian journey, when the nineteen-year-old Wiener was absorbing everything Italy could offer a young topographic artist. The work is now preserved in the Albertina, among Austria's foremost collections of works on paper.

The composition balances the vernacular domestic architecture of Tasso's house with the surrounding Sorrentine streetscape and, presumably, glimpses of the coastal landscape for which the town was known. Alt's early Italian watercolour technique employs particularly luminous washes appropriate to the intense southern light, with warm earth tones and golden ochres dominating the colour scheme.