GENELLI, GIOVANNI BUONAVENTURA (1798 -- 1868)

This article appears in Volume V11, Page 577 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: GAG-GEO

GENELLI, GIOVANNI BUONAVENTURA (1798 -- 1868) , German painter, was born at Berlin on the 28th of September 1798. He was the son of Janus Genelli, a painter whose landscapes are still preserved in the Schloss at Berlin, and grandson to Joseph Genelli, a Roman embroiderer employed to found a school of gobelins by Frederick the

Great

GREAT

. Buonaventura Genelli first took lessons from his father and then became a student of the Berlin

academy

ACADEMY, GREEK
ACADEMY, ROYAL

. After serving his time in the guards he went with a stipend to Rome, where he lived ten years, a friend and assistant to

Koch

KOCH
KOCH, ROBERT (1843–1910)

the landscape painter, a colleague of the sculptor Ernst Hahnel (1811-1891), Reinhart, Overbeck and Fuhrich, all of whom made a name in art. In 1830 he was commissioned by Dr Hartel to adorn a villa at

Leipzig

LEIPZIG

with frescoes, but quarrelling with this patron he withdrew to Munich, where he earned a scanty livelihood at first, though he succeeded at last in acquiring repute as an illustrative and figure draughts-man. In 1859 he was appointed a professor at

Weimar

WEIMAR

, where he died on the 13th of November 1868. Genelli painted few pictures, and it is very rare to find his canvases in public galleries, but there are six of his compositions in oil in the

Schack

SCHACK, ADOLF
FRIEDRICH
- FRIEDRICH, JOHANN (1836— )
, GRAF VON (1815-1894)

collection at Munich. These and numerous water-colours, as well as designs for engravings and lithographs, reveal an artist of considerable power' whose ideal was the antique, but who was also fascinated by the works of Michelangelo. Though a German by

birth

BIRTH (a word common in various forms to Teutonic languages from the root of the verb " to bear ")

, his spirit was unlike that of Overbeck or Fuhrich, whose art was reminiscent of the old masters of their own country. He seemed to hark back to the land of his fathers and endeavour to revive the traditions of the Italian Renaissance. Subtle in thought and powerfully conceived, his compositions are usually mythological, but full of matter, energetic and fiery in execution, and marked almost invariably by daring effects of foreshortening. Impeded by straitened means, the artist seems frequently to have

drawn

DRAWN

from

imagination

IMAGINATION

rather than from life, and much of his anatomy of muscle is in consequence conventional and false. But none the less Genelli merits his reputation as a bold and imaginative artist, and his name deserves to be remembered beyond the narrow limits of the early schools of Munich and

Weimar

WEIMAR

.

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