90 – 91 Alexander von Humboldt at Chimborazo The explorer Alexander von Humboldt and his French colleague Aimé Bonpland have set up camp on a high plateau in the Andes. In the foreground, Humboldt is wearing European clothing and taking a sextant from an indigenous companion. Aimé Bonpland sits in the right corner with a vasculum and bent over a herbarium under a tarpaulin. Next to him lies a dead condor. On the left, a group of indigenous attendants of the expedition are making a fire to cook potatoes and another is taking care of the pack animals. The background of the painting is dominated by the snow-capped volcano Chimborazo, located in today’s Ecuador. The inscription on the expedition crates between Humboldt and Bonpland reads ‘Expe[dition] Prussiana Hist[oriae] natur[alis]’. Recent research has shown that the painting was not commissioned by the Prussian king, as previously assumed, but by the Prussian Academy of Sciences. It was purchased after completion by King Frederick William III.1 During Humboldt’s trip to America from 1799 to 1804, the expedition group spent several days at Chimborazo, as we know from his travel diary and numerous sketches. Although the expedition to the twenty-thousand-foot mountain failed to reach the summit, the group reached a height never achieved before.2 Court painter Friedrich Wilhelm Weitsch created the painting after instructions and sketches provided by Alexander von Humboldt. The researcher held the painter in high regard and commissioned him with a portrait as well as scientific depictions of animals for his travelogue immediately upon his return from America. Only the inscription on the crates was probably added by the painter later and without Humboldt’s knowledge. The entire research trip to the Spanish colonies, which took place with the permission and under the protection of the Spanish government, is thus declared a Prussian project. As such, the inscription offered the Prussian King Frederick William III the opportunity to subsequently take part in the fame of the expedition. According to contemporary reports, Humboldt as a German scholar and subject of the king had set a monument not only to science but also to the nation.3 | SUSANNE EVERS Humboldt’s expedition as a Prussian project
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