Salerno, Italy

Cooke's Salerno, Italy from 1849 depicts the ancient port on the Amalfi coast where Norman conquerors established one of medieval Europe's most sophisticated courts and where the first medical school in Europe operated from the ninth century onward. Salerno's harbor, sheltered by the Cilento mountains and open to the Tyrrhenian Sea, provided Cooke with a subject that combined the specific quality of Italian coastal light with historical associations of unusual depth. The 1849 date places this in his most productive Italian period, when his travels were generating material that he continued to develop in finished oils for years after his return to Britain.

The composition balances the dramatic Salerno coastline with carefully rendered vessels in the harbor, the warm Italian light handled with a freedom of touch that suggests the influence of Cooke's Mediterranean experience on his technique.