早期

出生于1736年2月6日在西南部小镇Wiesensteig位于该地区的斯瓦比亚的侏罗德国。Messerschmidt长大的慕尼黑他的叔叔家,雕刻家版施洗约翰Straub写的成为他的第一个主人。他花了两年格拉茨在车间的其他产妇的叔叔,雕塑家菲利普版Jakob Straub写的。在1755年底他注册入学维也纳美术学院,成为雅各布Schletterer的学生。毕业之后,他在帝国武器收集工作。在大楼的沙龙在1760 - 63年他最早的艺术作品,帝国的青铜半身像夫妇和浮雕代表王权的继承人和他的妻子。与这些作品他加入了晚了巴洛克式的宫廷艺术表示,在确定巴尔萨泽费迪南德摩尔的影响。这一趋势属于另外两个,比原尺寸的锡雕像代表皇室夫妇委托奥地利的玛丽亚·特蕾莎1764年和1766年之间和执行。除了一些其他人像他也与宗教主题。雕像受公主的萨也活了下来。

成熟

巴洛克时期的作品在1769年结束与一个破产法庭的医生杰拉德van Swieten委托的皇后。同时他的第一次新古典作品出现,made-characteristically-for学院。这些,后来他应用许多工作经验在1765年的一项研究去罗马。这些早期的之一,严重的头从1769 - 1769年,受到罗马共和肖像,代表了著名的医生弗朗茨·安东催眠师。大约在同一时间,在1770 - 72年Messerschmidt开始工作在他所谓的字符,它一直认为(尤其是恩斯特克丽丝)与确定偏执思想和幻觉从哪个年代的开始,主人开始受到影响。Messerschmidt发现自己越来越多地与他的环境。他的处境恶化到这样的程度,在1774年,当他申请newly-vacant办公室领导学院教授,自1769年以来,他一直在这教学而不是他被驱逐出教学。在一封给皇后,计数Kaunitz称赞Messerschmidt的能力,但认为他的病的本质(称为“混乱的头”)将不利于机构这样的约会。

Early years

Born February 6th 1736 in the southwestern town of Wiesensteig, located in the region of the Swabian Jura Germany. Messerschmidt grew up in the Munich home of his uncle, the sculptor Johann Baptist Straub, who became his first master. He spent two years in Graz, in the workshop of his other maternal uncle, the sculptor Philipp Jakob Straub. At the end of 1755 he matriculated at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and became a pupil of Jacob Schletterer. Graduated, he got work at the imperial arms collection. Here, in the building's salon in 1760-63 he made his first known works of art, the bronze busts of the imperial couple and reliefs representing the heir of the crown and his wife. With these works he joined the Late Baroque art of courtly representation, which was under the determining influence of Balthasar Ferdinand Moll. To this trend belong two other, larger than lifesize tin statues representing the imperial couple, commissioned by Maria Theresa of Austria and executed between 1764 and 1766. Besides some other portraits he also made works with a religious subject. A number of statues commissioned by the Princess of Savoy have survived as well.

Maturity[edit]

The Baroque period of his oeuvre ended in 1769 with a bust of the court physicianGerard van Swieten, commissioned by the Empress. At the same time his first earlyNeo-Classic works appeared, made—characteristically—for the Academy. To these and later works he applied many experiences gained in 1765 during a study trip to Rome. One of these early, severe heads from the years 1769-70, influenced by Roman republican portraits, represents the well-known doctor Franz Anton Mesmer. At about the same time, in 1770-72 Messerschmidt began to work on his so-called character heads, which it has been argued (notably by Ernst Kris) were connected with certain paranoid ideas and hallucinationsfrom which, at the beginning of the seventies, the master began to suffer. Messerschmidt found himself increasingly at odds with his milieu. His situation worsened to such an extent, that in 1774, when he applied for the newly-vacant office of a leading professor at the Academy, where he had been teaching since 1769, instead of getting it he was expelled from teaching. In a letter to the Empress, Count Kaunitz praised Messerschmidt's abilities, but suggested that the nature of his illness (referred to as a "confusion in the head") would make such an appointment detrimental to the institution.

Later years

Bitter, he left Vienna, moved to his native village, Wiesensteig, and from there in the same year, following an invitation, to Munich. Here he waited two years for a promised commission and for a permanent employment at the Court. In 1777 he went to Pressburg (now Bratislava) where his brother, Johann Adam worked as a sculptor. Here he spent the last six years of his life almost in retirement, on the outskirts of the town. He dedicated himself primarily to his character heads.