Aristocrat by birth, tireless adventurer and female seducer by vocation

Anselm Feuerbach (September 12, 1829 January 4, 1880) is a famous German artist of the 19th century, an outstanding master of the historical genre. Anselm Feuerbach was also a skilled portrait painter, most of his paintings were painted in the neoclassical style. The best masterpieces of the master’s work today are kept in museums in Germany, and his biography is closely connected with Italy, where the artist lived a significant part of his life.

Anselm Feuerbach had a noble aristocratic background. His grandfather Paul (Paul Johann Anselm von Feuerbach) was an outstanding legal scholar, his father Joseph (Joseph Anselm Feuerbach) was a professor of history, archeology and philology, and his uncle Ludwig (Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach) was a famous philosopher.

Biography of Anselm Feuerbach

Anselm Feuerbach was born on September 12, 1829 in the old small town of Speyer in western Germany. He was left an orphan very early his mother died when the boy was not yet a year old. After this sad event, little Anselm and his older sister Emilia were raised by their grandparents for 4 years. And then his father married a second time to Henrietta Heidenreich and this woman was destined to play an important role in the fate of the future artist.

Henrietta sincerely fell in love with her husband’s children from her first marriage and became their second mother. She encouraged her stepson’s passion for art in every possible way; they had a very warm relationship throughout their lives.

In 1836, Anselm went to elementary school in Freiburg, where his father headed the department at the local university. The boy early showed a talent for the visual arts, and from the age of 14 he began to attend private drawing lessons. A year later, young Feuerbach created a cycle of illustrations for the famous medieval epic “The Song of the Nibelungs” and sent them to the Dusseldorf Academy of Arts to several professors for familiarization.

The talented teenager’s drawings made a strong impression on Wilhelm von Schadow and Carl Friedrich Lessing. Influential masters of painting immediately invited Feuerbach to continue his studies with them. Until 1848, Anselm studied in Dusseldorf, and then transferred to the Munich Academy. He lived in Bavaria for only a year and soon left for Antwerp to continue his studies with Gustaaf Wappers.

In 1851, Anselm Feuerbach arrived in Paris, where he worked for the next three years in the studio of Thomas Couture.

Here he met the best masters of French painting of that era, including:

• Eugène Delacroix
• Gustave Courbet;
• Theodore Rousseau.

In Paris, the artist created his first famous masterpiece, Hafiz at the Fountain, in which the influence of the French school of painting is clearly felt. Then, in 1854, he returned to Germany in Heidelberg, where, after the death of his father, his stepmother and sister settled.

But in his homeland, Anselm Feuerbach did not stay long and already in 1855 went to Italy. First of all, he visited Venice, and he was greatly impressed by the work of Titian (Tiziano Vecellio). Then the painter visited Florence, and then came to Rome, where, at last, his long wanderings in Europe ended.

Anselm Feuerbach lived in the capital of Italy until 1873. It was here that the unique style of the master was finally formed and most of his best works were created.

Upon arrival in the Eternal City, he became a member of the Union of German Artists in Rome and became close friends with fellow compatriots:

• Arnold Böcklin;
• Reinhold Begas;
• Karl Friedrich Fries;
• Ludwig Passini.

In 1860, Feuerbach met the Italian beauty Anna Risi, who for the next 9 years became his muse, model and lover. The artist nicknamed her “Nanna” and painted about 30 of her portraits, and also used the girl as a model when creating his paintings on historical themes.

In 1866, Anna Risi left her lover and left with a wealthy Englishman for London.

But Anselm did not last long in upset feelings. Within a few months, he found a new muse, 18-year-old Lucia Brunacci. By that time, Feuerbach was already a sought-after artist and had many wealthy clients. He opened his own large studio in Rome and painted with great enthusiasm.

In 1873, Anselm Feuerbach was offered the position of professor at the Vienna Academy of Arts and, after some deliberation, he left for the Austrian capital. Here the master met the composer Johannes Brahms, with whom he maintained friendly relations until his death. But the teaching career of the painter was not very successful. The leadership of the academy did not like the fact that the artist periodically left for Rome during the educational process and Feuerbach, in the end, was forced to resign.

He settled in Venice and planned to travel to London to earn a decent amount of money by painting portraits of local nobles. But these plans were not destined to come true. On January 4, 1880, Anselm Feuerbach died suddenly at the age of 50. He was buried in Germany in Nuremberg, next to the graves of Ludwig Feuerbach’s uncle and the great German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer.

The most famous paintings by Anselm Feuerbach

The great German artist left many magnificent works to posterity. And yet, some of the most famous paintings by Anselm Feuerbach include:

• The Death of the Poet Pietro Aretino (1854) is a work that in an extremely dynamic manner describes the death of the famous Italian poet during a merry feast. The artist came up with the idea of ​​creating this painting while still in Paris, but he realized it already in Germany.
• Iphigenia (1862) is the first version of a painting depicting an ancient Greek goddess, modeled by Anna Risi. In two later versions, the artist painted the heroine in the image of his second muse Lucia Brunacci.
• Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta (1864) is a brilliant masterpiece of the master’s work, in which he skillfully depicted the romantic relationship of two young lovers.
• Battle of the Amazons (1873) is a large-scale work of the painter on mythological themes with many carefully drawn characters. The plot of the picture is based on an ancient legend about the participation of the Amazons in the Trojan War.

Anselm Feuerbach is rightfully considered one of the greatest masters of the historical genre in the fine arts of the 19th century. In his work, the traditions of Italian and German painting from different eras are surprisingly combined.