Karl_Friedrich_Schinkel

Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841), German architect and painter, and professor in the academy of fine arts at Berlin from 1820, was born at Neuruppin, in Brandenburg, on the 13th of March 1781. He was a pupil of Friedrich Gi]ly, the continuation of whose work he undertook when his master died in 1800. In 1803 Schinkel went to Italy, returning to Berlin in 1805. The Napoleonic wars interfered seriously with his work as architect, so that he took up landscape painting, displaying a talent for the romantic delineation of natural scenery. In 1810 he drew a plan for the mausoleum of Queen Louise and in 1819 a brilliant sketch for the Berlin cathedral in Gothic style. From 1808 to 1814 he painted a number of dioramas for Gropins. From 1815 he devoted much time to scene painting, examples of his work being still in use in the royal theatres of Germany. Schinkel's principal buildings are in Berlin and its neighbourhood. His merits are, however, best shown in his unexecuted plans for the transformation of the Acropolis into a royal palace, for the erection of the Orianda Palace in the Crimea and for a monument to Frederick the Great. These and other designs may be studied in his Sammlung architektonischer Entwiirfe (1820-1837, 3rd ed. 1857-1858) and his Werke der hoheren Baukunst (1845-1846, new ed. 1874).

See the biographies by Kugler, Bottischer, Quast, H. Grimm, Waagen, Woetmann, Pecht, Dohme, and vol. xxviii. of the Kitinstlermonographie, by Ziller (Leipzig, 1897).