View of the Gulf of Pozzuoli from Solfatara

Jacob Philipp Hackert (15 September 1737 – 28 April 1807) was a landscape painter from Brandenburg, who did most of his work in Italy.

Hackert was born in 1737 in Prenzlau in the Margraviate of Brandenburg (now in Germany). He trained with his father Philipp (a portraitist and painter of animals) and his uncle, before going to the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin in 1758. Later he traveled to Swedish Pomerania and Stockholm, at the invitation of Adolf Friedrich von Olthof, a Swedish government official and businessman. For a time, he lived with Von Olthof and painted decorative murals at his estate.

He spent from 1765 to 1768 in Paris with the Swiss artist Balthasar Anton Dunker, where he focused on painting in gouache. He met and was inspired by Claude Joseph Vernet, who was already famous as a painter of landscapes and seascapes, and the German engraver Johann Georg Wille.

In 1768 Hackert left Paris with his brother Georg, and went to Italy, basing himself mainly in Rome and Naples, where he produced many works for Sir William Hamilton. He travelled all over Italy, gaining a reputation as a talented landscape painter.