Portraits of Frederick the Great

127:, as children (c.1714–15). Several times he painted the crown prince and young king in a representational style with smooth features. With some justification, critics accused Pesne of portraying all of his royal sitters equally beautifully and lacking any sharper characterization. For instance, referring to Pesne’s 1740 portrait of Frederick, art historian Helmut Börsch-Supan writes that the artist “wasn't interested in a true portrayal of the character. Pesne painted Frederick the Great as he depicted beautiful women courting the admiration of their viewers. This is a feminine trait that makes it difficult to see the full personality in this portrait.” Indeed, Pesne's idealized representations of Frederick do not correspond with a statement by the Austrian ambassador Friedrich Heinrich Graf von Seckendorff about the 14-year-old crown prince that he looked "old and stiff" at a young age and acted accordingly presumably because of the hardships imposed on him by his father. This means that already in his younger years, Frederick “does not seem to have been a rather handsome boy”. Significantly, even his father said, when the English royal family had asked him for a portrait of the crown prince, that they should have a large monkey painted because that was Frederick's likeness. 251: 455: 479: 592: 580: 443: 495: 273: 176:, the conception of Frederick portraits seems to have changed, now even allowing the depiction of individual shortcomings or the effects of experienced stress. At the same time, in connection with an intensive formation of legends about the military successes of the king, the emergence of an “age type” can be observed both in painting and sculpture. By emphasizing the sharp nasolabial folds, the straight lines of the forehead and the bridge of the nose, the narrow mouth and the protruding eyes the artists created a type of image that art historian Helmut Börsch-Supan has characterized as “very Prussian in its expressive frugality to the point of scantiness.” 604: 411: 564: 539: 427: 234:

the painters' brush as much as it depended on me," he wrote to Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert in 1774. Furthermore, he said to the Marquis d’Argens: "There is so much talk about the fact that we terrestrial kings are made in the image of God. Then I look in the mirror and am obliged to say to myself: How unlucky for God!" After extensive analysis of different types of Frederick portraits, Andrea M. Kluxen arrives at the conclusion that there is no realistic image that accurately depicts Frederick's (ugly) facial features.

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commissioned by the king, because there was a demand for his likeness from all of the courts of Europe. None of these official portraits show the real facial features of the monarch. Many comments from Frederick's contemporaries who met the king prove that his true appearance did not match his depictions in painted and engraved portraits. For instance, in 1761, during a meeting with Frederick,

306:(completed in 1770). In her analysis of Frederick busts and statues, Saskia Hüneke also noticed that nearly all of them depict the nose in a relatively straight line. "In comparison, the wax pouring from the original form of the death mask does not show this line, so that it is more an ideal of the ancient Greek profile". 222:

bourgeois-looking king and, in its concentration on the physiognomy, reflects Graff's portrait style more than a king's claim to representation. Helmut Börsch-Supan assumes that Graff only corrected the facial features that he found “carved” in Franke's portrait in order to make them “more carnal, softer and human.”

1435:"When reproducing Frederick’s nose, most of the artists seem to have oriented themselves to the classical Greek ideal of beauty. This becomes particularly clear in pure profile views, for example in a pastel by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff." See Krysmanski, "The classic straight nose in portraits", in 390:

Art historian Helmut Börsch-Supan concludes: “The king's indifference to his portrait ... and the difficulty of capturing his physical appearance in a picture, due to the mobility of his mind, have meant that there is no truly valid portrait of him. The insatiable need of contemporaries and posterity

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painted Frederick the Great for the Prussian envoy in Dresden, Philipp Karl von Alvensleben. For this portrait and some later copies the monarch never sat. The artist is said to have observed the king from a distance when he attended a military parade and then made the picture from memory. It shows a

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In 1767, Anton Friedrich König (1722-1787) was appointed royal court miniature portrait painter for Frederick the Great. In 1769, he produced a watercolour painting on ivory showing the king as an intellectual writer, historian and philosopher in front of his writing table, surrounded by the books in

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stayed in Berlin from 1763 to 1769, he painted at least two portraits of the Prussian king, one of which has been in the royal collection in London since 1816. According to Paul Seidel, the artist put the “stamp of unnatural” on these portraits of Frederick. “You can see at first glance that they are

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Indeed, Frederick had a pronounced aversion to sitting for portraits, which he consistently refused because he was convinced that he was ugly. "You have to be Apollo, Mars or Adonis to be painted, but since I do not have the honour of resembling one of these gentlemen, I have withdrawn my face from

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According to art historian Bernd Krysmanski, "Frederick the Great disliked his own features. … Most of his portraits disgusted him. The reason was simple: he was convinced that he was ugly", because he had "a prominently hooked and aquiline nose, and little else to recommend him to connoisseurs of

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seems to have invented a pictorial formula that depicted the crown prince in profile with a classically straightened nose, which must have had an immense influence on countless later profile portraits of the king that were widely distributed through prints. According to Börsch-Supan, the receding

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In the case of eighteenth-century portraits of monarchs, less importance was attached to the likeness of the sitters, and more to the political and social role in which they wanted to be represented in public. For example, they were shown as rulers with scepter and ermine cloak or as competent

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on 17 August 1786, demonstrates precisely what had led the king to his conviction that he was extremely ugly: Frederick had a prominently hooked nose and little else to make him look handsome. This aquiline nose is not depicted in the official painted portraits. However, it is to be seen in a

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According to Arnold Hildebrand, it speaks against the fact that the king granted the painter a session, that "the picture does not correspond to the image of him that we have in our heads based on the reports of the man who was almost crushed by fate. ... Ziesenis has portrayed the king in a

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The king gave several of these pictures away as gifts in recognition of rendered services, whether as life-size paintings, miniatures set with diamonds that were worn like medals, or representations on snuff boxes. However, most portraits were produced for commercial reasons without being

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military leaders, not what they looked like in their everyday life. According to art historian Frauke Mankartz, the recognizable "brand" was more important than realism. The king himself often said that his portraits did not resemble him, and his contemporaries, including

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forehead, whose contour in side view is a straight continuation of the bridge of the nose, gives the face something bold and sharp, but is in strange contradiction to the full, somewhat drooping lower face and the beginnings of a double chin.

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In 1769, Joseph II wrote to his mother Maria Theresa about the Prussian King he had met in Neisse: "He does not resemble any of the pictures you have seen of him ." Letter dated 29 August 1769, cited in Gustav Berthold Volz,

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was the subject of many portraits. Many were painted during Frederick's life, and he would give portraits of himself as gifts. Almost all portraits of Frederick are idealized and do not reflect how he looked according to his

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it was clear: “ no portrait is like him.” Consequently, in 1897, art historian Paul Seidel complained that no clear judgment could be derived from the surviving portraits as to what Frederick the Great really looked like.

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Ein Denkmal für den König: Das Reiterstandbild für Friedrich II. Unter den Linden in Berlin / A Monument for the King: The Equestrian Statue of King Friedrich II on the Boulevard Unter den Linden in Berlin

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A very popular depiction of Frederick in the new style is the portrait painted by Johann Heinrich Christian Franke in 1763/64, of which a number of variants exist. It shows a bourgeois king holding up his

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of March 6, 1763, he wrote: "You will see me again as an old man ... I'm as gray as a donkey, I lose a tooth every day and I'm half paralyzed from gout". Ziesenis's portrait hardly agrees with this.

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See Gerd Bartoschek, “Gemeinsam stark? Anna Dorothea Therbusch und ihre Zusammenarbeit mit Christoph Friedrich Reinhold Lisiewsky”, in Helmut Börsch-Supan and Wolfgang Savelsberg (eds.),

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the king is posed rather awkwardly in a slightly bent position on horseback, a representation that circulated in numerous copies and engraved versions. A print after it was later used by

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had painted of him, he ironically said: “In order not to dishonour her brush, she has adorned my contorted face with the grace of youth.” Only a few years later, Therbusch's brother

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painted a portrait of the Prussian king that looks very different from his sister's, which is all the more surprising given that the siblings often collaborated on their paintings.

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as the most famous work. In these pictures he continues to avoid representing Frederick with a crooked nose, although he must have known the death mask of the Prussian king.

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Martin Schieder, “Die auratische Abwesenheit des Königs: Zum schwierigen Umgang Friedrichs des Großen mit dem eigenen Bildnis,” in Bernd Sösemann/Gregor Vogt-Spira (eds.),

358: 258: 337:. The features of the flautist depicted on the left of Hogarth's painting bear a striking resemblance to the death mask of Frederick, as does the face of the flautist in 1720: 2224: 309:

Only one artist seems to have shown the Prussian king as he really was, namely with an extremely clear aquiline nose and playing the flute in front of a symbol of

153:, especially since he had an aversion to being portrayed and the artist made Frederick's facial features look far too handsome. Indeed, in 1763, at the end of the 2386: 1847: 538: 329:

and was completed in 1744. Art historian Bernd Krysmanski argues that Hogarth must have learned about Frederick's facial features from the Prussian engraver

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Such images, based on Knobelsdorff's and Pesne's idealized portraiture, dominated both in painted and engraved form until the 1760s. However, after the

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Friedrich der Grosse: Ausstellung des Geheimen Staatsarchivs Preußischer Kulturbesitz anläßlich des 200. Todestages König Friedrich II. von Preußen

466: 157:, Frederick "complained in his letters of how much weight he had lost and how thin, fragile, and gray he had become." For instance, in a letter to 2479:

Françoise Forster-Hahn, “Adolph Menzel’s ‘Daguerreotypical’ Image of Frederick the Great: A Liberal Bourgeois Interpretation of German History,”

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Françoise Forster-Hahn, "Adolph Menzel's 'Daguerreotypical' Image of Frederick the Great: A Liberal Bourgeois Interpretation of German History,"

2196: 1629: 2359:, including that of the Prussian king. See Gisela Hopp, "Menzels 'Atelierwand' als Bildträger von Gedanken über Kriegsnot und Machtmissbrauch," 2273:

Das einzig authentische Porträt des Alten Fritz? Is the only true likeness of Frederick the Great to be found in Hogarth's 'Marriage A-la-Mode'?

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Das einzig authentische Porträt des Alten Fritz? Is the only true likeness of Frederick the Great to be found in Hogarth's 'Marriage A-la-Mode'?

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Das einzig authentische Porträt des Alten Fritz? Is the only true likeness of Frederick the Great to be found in Hogarth's 'Marriage A-la-Mode'?

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As during his lifetime Frederick protested against being depicted in monuments, only after his death numerous monuments were erected, including

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Das einzig authentische Porträt des Alten Fritz?: Is the only true likeness of Frederick the Great to be found in Hogarth's Marriage A-la-Mode?

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which has been claimed to be the only painting for which Frederick sat during his lifetime. It was commissioned by Frederick's sister,

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