Hans Makart, The Death of Cleopatra, 1875.
Liechtenstein, The Princely Collection
Hans Makart was a 19th-century Austrian academic history painter, designer, and decorator. He is best known for his influence on Gustav Klimt and other Austrian artists, but in his own era he was considered an important artist himself and a celebrity figure in the high culture of Vienna and attended with almost cult-like adulation.
Makart was the son of a chamberlain at the Mirabell Palace in Salzburg, Austria, born in the former residence of the prince-archbishops of Salzburg, the city in which Mozart had been born. Initially, he received his training in painting at the Vienna Academy between 1850 and 1851 from Johann Fischbach. While in the Academy, German art was under the rule of a classicism, which was entirely intellectual and academic—clear and precise drawing, sculpturesque modelling, and pictorial erudition were esteemed above all. Makart, who was a poor draughtsman, but who had a passionate and sensual love of color, was impatient to escape the routine of art school drawing. For his fortune, he was found by his instructors to be devoid of all talent and forced to leave the Vienna Academy.
