Heckert was highly patronised in Rome both by Italians and foreigners; Pius VI. was delighted with his works, and his reputation as a landscape-painter was unrivalled by any of his contemporaries, though he was a very inferior painter to Wilson, who was neither appreciated nor known at that time : Wilson left Rome in 1755. In 1777 Heckert made a tour in Sicily with Richard Payne Knight and Charles Gore, and iu 1773 a tour in the north of Italy with Charles Gore and his family. In 1782 be went to Naples, and wee presented to the king, Ferdinand IV., by the Russian ambassador, Count Raaumowsky. The king took pleasure in the works of Heckert, and treated him with great kindness and familiarity ; he used to style him Don Filippo. In 1786, after the departure of Count Rnsumowsky, he appointed Heckert his principal painter, who settled with his brother from that time in Naples. They had apartments in the Palazzo Francavilla on the Chiaja, which they occupied until they were dis possessed by General Rey, the French commandant of Naples in 1799, who took possession of them himself; he however treated the Ilackerta with great kindness, gave them passports, and suffered them to depart with all their property, with which they arrived safely at Leghorn., Ilackert's salary was 100 ducats per month, with his apartments free both in Naples and at Caserta. In 1787 Heckert painted a large picture of the Launch of the l'arthenope,' 61, the first ship of war which was built at Castelamare; it was engraved by his brother Georg; he painted five other large pictures of Neapolitan seaports, which were all enlivened by some historical scene of interest : they are in the palace at Quarts. In 1783 the king sent him to Apulia to make
drawings of all the sea-porta of that coast, which he paiuted, from klanfrcdonia to Taranto. In 1790 he visited on a similar mission the coasts of Calabria and Sicily: the king equipped for him a small felucca called a ecappavia, manned with twelve men well armed, for the express purpose : he was out about five months from April to August inclusive.
Heckert lived, after his departure from Naples in 1799, a short time in Leghorn, whence he removed to Florence, where he resided in a villa which he purchased in 1803 until his death in April 1807.
Ilackert's works are not remarkable for any particular quality of art: they are simple portraits or prospects in ordinary light and shade, and their beauty accordingly depends upon the local beauty of the ecene. The detail is careful without being minute, and where a memento of any particular scene is the chief object of desire, his works are calculated to give perhaps complete satisfaction, except in the case of some fastidious connoisseur who might require a bolder and more artistic foreground than those which characterise his works generally. His drawings are extremely numerous, and his paintings are not rare : many of them have been engraved. Ile painted iu oil, in encaustic, and iu body watercolours or is guazzo, a species of distemper. He also etched several plates.
Gothe has written an eulogistic life of Heckert, whose close imitation of nature delighted the German critic, and he has extolled him beyond his merits.
(Clothe, iierke—Philipp Hacker'; and Winekelmann and rein Jahrhundert.)