[Born 1777. Still living.]
The leading German sculptor of his day—endowed with great imaginative powers, and excelling in portraits, which, under his treatment, exhibit truth and nature, intimately associated with poetic elevation. In 1804, he took his way from Berlin to Rome, and presently secured the friendship of Thorwaldsen, whose love for the antique greatly influenced and directed his taste. Whilst at Rome he executed “Mars and Venus wounded by Diomedes,” a colossal bust of the King of Prussia, and other celebrated works. In 1811, invited by the King of Prussia to Berlin, he produced many colossal statues and countless busts. His colossal “Victories,” for the Walhalla, and the equestrian monument of Frederic the Great, are well known efforts of his genius. A great artist—competent to express vigorously, truthfully, and naturally, historical rather than ideal conception.
[By F. Tieck. Plaster. 1825. Modelled, to be given to his friend Rauch, but the marble bust not finished. From Lager-Haus.]
324. Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Architect and Painter.
[Born at Neuruppin, in Germany, 1781. Died at Berlin, 1841. Aged 60.]
Styled by his countrymen the Luther of architecture. Employed by the King of Prussia to erect those structures in his capital which have stamped a new character on Berlin, and endowed it with high architectural claims. He gave a new impulse to his art, both by his influence and his example, and was besides a generous and amiable man.
[By F. Tieck, 1819. The marble bust is in the Berlin Museum. A copy in bronze is on the staircase of the Royal Theatre, Berlin.]
325. Leo von Klenze. Architect.
[Born at Hildesheim, in Hanover, 1784. Still living.]
The architect, in Munich, of “The Glyptothek,” and the constructor of many works, Royal and otherwise, in the same city. Also the designer of the plans for the “Walhalla.” Author of some literary productions bearing upon his art. In 1844, accompanied Ludwig I. to Greece to examine the plans already made for the improvement of Athens, and to suggest original designs. Klenze possesses great decorative skill, and a comprehensive knowledge of the history of architecture; but the true genius and high faculty of composition appears on few of his productions. He does not take what is universal in the various styles with which his mind is familiar, in order to form a style expressive of his own spirit, and suitable to the country and climate in which it is his business to exhibit it, but he borrows his structures from Greece and Italy, and deposits them in Munich, loading the city with specimens of foreign styles of architecture. His effects are undoubtedly picturesque, and the decorations of his buildings always beautiful, but fault is found with the internal arrangements of his edifices, with the lowness of the apartments, and with the bases of his façades, which are occasionally mean and even vulgar.