Ludwig von Schwanthaler
Ludwig von Schwanthaler
Who is Who
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Everyone knows them, the lists like “100 places you should have visited”. You have such a list here in front of you — albeit in a slightly different form. Its title could be “The history of art, represented by 24 masters”, for that was the task King Ludwig I of Bavaria set the architect Leo von Klenze and the painter Georg von Dillis in 1832.
Artists of distinction
According to Dillis, statues of “the most excellent artists” were to grace the south gable of the newly built Pinakothek in Munich, the city’s first public art museum, which was considered too bare. Painters of distinction and renown, that is. And also in chronological order. Here, we are dealing with a kind of overview in which each figure, each name, embodies a chapter in the history of art. That is, the history of art as it was understood at the beginning of the 19th century, namely, divided primarily into schools of landscapes and painting: Fra Angelico, Bellini, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Titian, Raphael, and Corregio, among others, stood for art south of the Alps, Jan van Eyck and Hans Memling for the Netherlands, Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein for Germany, Velasquez and Murillo for Spain, Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain for France.
“same same but different”
It was also a calling card for the museum — very similar to the one designed over a decade later for the Kunsthalle Karlsruhe. For here, too, reliefs, busts, and frescoes of notable artists at the entrance portal, on the staircase, and in the upper foyer present a similar view of art history, depicted by its most important representatives. Women, by the way, were not even allowed to study at art academies back then, and were not admitted to the ranks of the greats in art until much later.
Names, poses and faces
So what you see here in the half-light of the past is a characteristic concept of the early 19th century. And more specifically, it is a series of casts based on the models that the sculptor Ludwig von Schwanthaler made for the Pinakothek sculptures mentioned previously. Both the original models and the facade sculptures executed in stone on a much larger scale were destroyed during World War II, but the small figures still give a good idea of how important portrait-like features as well as recognisable poses and garments like Dürer’s famous fur coat were to Schwanthaler. For a name, at least since the Renaissance, also includes a face.
Dates and facts
| Title | Albrecht Dürer |
|---|---|
| Artist | Ludwig von Schwanthaler |
| Date | 1835 |
| Measurements Plastic | H 45.8cm W 18cm D 14.4cm |
| Material | Plaster |