Portret van Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Medium
etching
Dimensions
107; 175
About this artwork
collector's mark: Lugt 2228
Art Historical Context
**Portret van Johann Wolfgang von** (1776) is a delicate etching by Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki, a Polish-German artist renowned for his intricate book illustrations and portraits during the Enlightenment era. Measuring just 175mm by 107mm, this intimate work captures the young Goethe at age 27, amid his meteoric rise to fame following the 1774 publication of * Sorrows of Young Wer*. Chodowiecki, who later became director of the Berlin of Arts, excelled in etching—a printmaking technique using acid to incise fine lines into a metal plate—allowing for precise, reproducible portraits that democr...
About the Artist
Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki · 1726–1801
Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki (1726–1801) was a German painter and printmaker of Polish-Huguenot descent who became the most celebrated graphic artist in 18th-century Germany. Born in Danzig (now Gdańsk), he created approximately 2,000 etchings that serve as an invaluable visual record of German bourgeois life during the Enlightenment. Largely self-taught, Chodowiecki moved to Berlin in 1743 and ach...