CHRISTIAN

See also:

• DANIEL
• DANIEL (DANIL)
• DANIEL, BOOK
• DANIEL, GABRIEL (1649-1728)

DANIEL

See also:

• CHRISTIAN DANIEL RAUCH (1777 – 1857)

RAUCH (1777 – 1857)  , German sculptor, was born at Arolsen in the principality of Waldeck on the 2nd of January 1777 . His parents were poor and unable to place him under efficient masters . His first instructor taught him little else than the art of sculpturing gravestones, and Professor Ruhl of Cassel could not give him much more . A wider field of improvement opened up before him when he removed to Berlin in 1797; but he was obliged to earn a livelihood by becoming a royal lackey, and to practise his art in spare hours . Queen Louisa, surprising him one day in the act of modelling her features in wax, sent him to study at the Academy of Art . Not long afterwards, in 1804, Count Sandrecky gave him the means to complete his education at Rome, where William von Humboldt, Canova and Thorwaldsen befriended him . Among other works, he executed bas-reliefs of " Hippolytus and Phaedra," " Mars and Venus wounded by Diomede," and a " Child praying." In 1811 Rauch was commissioned to execute a monument for Queen Louisa of Prussia . The statue, representing the queen in a sleeping posture, was placed in a mausoleum in the grounds of Charlottenburg, and procured great fame for the artist . The erection of nearly all public statues came to be entrusted to him . There were, among others, Billow and Scharnhorst at Berlin, Blucher at Breslau, Maximilian at Munich, Francke at Halle, Purer at Nuremberg, Luther at Wittenberg, and the grand-duke Paul Frederick at Schwerin . At length, in 183o, he began, along with Schinkel the architect, the models for a colossal equestrian monument at Berlin to Frederick the Great . This work was inaugurated with great pomp in May 1851, and is regarded as one of the master-pieces of modern sculpture .

Princes decorated Rauch with honours and the

academies of Europe enrolled him among their members . A statue of Kant for Konigsberg and a statue of Thaer for Berlin occupied his attention during some of his last years; and he had just finished a model of " Moses praying between Aaron and Hur " when he was attacked by his last illness . He died on the 3rd of December 1857 .