ABSTRACT
On 14 September 1786, while travelling through the Veneto region of northern Italy, the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe stopped in Malcesine, a small harbour town on Lake Garda, not far from the Austrian border. There he installed himself in the courtyard of the medieval fortress overlooking the lake and began to sketch its ruined tower. In Goethe’s account of his Italian journey, published thirty years later, he describes what happened next:
I had not been sitting and drawing for long when people began coming into the court, looking at me and pacing up and down. Their numbers grew, and eventually they stopped pacing and I found myself surrounded. I realised that it was my drawing that was disturbing them, but I did not allow this to distract me and calmly carried on. Finally, a rather dubious-looking man came up to me and asked what I was doing. I answered that I was drawing the ancient tower as a memento of Malcesine. He then replied that this was forbidden and that I should stop drawing. Since he spoke in the Venetian dialect that I could barely understand, I said to him that I did not understand him. With true Italian composure he then took my sheet of paper and tore it up, but handed me back the pieces. 1
