Ludwig Thiersch

Ludwig Thiersch (April 12, 1825 – May 10, 1909 ) was a German painter, primarily of mythological and religious subjects and especially of ecclesiastical art, also influential in Greece.

Early life Thiersch was born in Munich, the son of classicist and philhellene Friedrich Thiersch, and brother of surgeon Karl Thiersch and theologian H. W. J. Thiersch. He attended the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich to study sculpture, but after a few years turned to painting, in which he became a student of Heinrich Maria von Hess, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, and Karl Schorn. After the Academy, he painted a depiction of Sakuntala (1848) and a scene of Camisards, and then traveled to Rome, where he sketched scenes from daily Italian life and painted Hiob unter seinen Freunden. He painted several frescoes in Greek churches, and was at the forefront of a movement to "modernize" Byzantine art by introducing elements from post-Renaissance such as naturalistic perspective and anatomy. In this, he is sometimes credited with discovering Byzantine art for the world of modern art, but such reform was met with fierce opposition from some, who opposed to what they saw as attempts to replace longstanding Greek traditions with foreign ones. who would become one of the best-known Greek painters of the 19th century, and who would manage to engage international traditions while still producing art seen as authentically Greek. Thiersch's most notable fresco in Athens is in the Church of Saint Nikodimos.

Vienna, Rome, Saint Petersburg, Bavaria, and London

Through the rest of his life, Thiersch traveled from city to city, being employed alternately to paint church frescoes and to produce oil paintings for private patrons. His church art is particularly notable, and together with Ludwig Seitz and Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin, he is considered to have led a revival in western European ecclesiastical art.

Following the position in Vienna, Thiersch was employed in Rome by Simon Sinas, a Greek philanthropist, for whom he produced a number of works on mythological and religious subjects, including Charon als Seelenführer, Bakchos' Einzug in den Hain von Kolonos, and Thetis' Klage um Achilleus. and of St. Stephen's Greek Orthodox Church in Paris (consecrated 1895).