TRIPPEL, Alexander - b. 1744 Schaffhausen, d. 1793 Roma

Sculptor of Swiss origin, but he moved with his family to London when he was ten. In 1763 he moved on to the Copenhagen academy of art. Numerous changes of base followed - Copenhagen, Berlin, Paris, Switzerland and Rome - until he finally settled in Rome. When the news of the death of Frederick the Great reached him there in 1786, Trippel designed a wax model of a memorial to the king, while Schadow was doing just the same in his workshop. Both works was conceived as equestrian statues modeled more or less on the statue of Marcus Aurelius. Trippel’s design was clearly more interesting, because, though it did not get him the commission, it gained him honorary membership of the Prussian Academy of Arts. In his model, the notion first appears of adding sculptures of the nation’s leading figures to the base of the equestrian statue. The idea would be put into practice almost 600 years later in Rauch’s memorial.

Trippel’s best known work today is the outsize bust of Goethe in the princely Residenz at Bad Arolsen in Waldeck.

As Winckelmann proposed, Trippel turned directly to the models of classical Antiquity for inspiration, and in doing so left the pictorial language of the Rococo far behind. He thus became, along with Canova, one of the main representatives of early Neoclassicism in Rome, and a source of considerable influence and ideas for the next generation of sculptors.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Trippel’s best-known work today, the bust of Goethe, came about after the sculptor met the poet in Rome in 1786. Prince Christian von Waldeck, then staying in Rome, commissioned Trippel to do a model of the bust. The portrait shows the 38-year-old Goethe in the style of a classical portrait bust. During the work, Trippel told the client: “The hair is long and hangs down very loosely, making from the front the shape of an Apollo head.”. The marble execution of the Goethe portrait, dated on the back by Trippel to 1789, was passed by Prince Christian as a present to his brother Prince Frederick, ruler of Waldeck, who installed it in the stairwell of his palace in Arolsen.

19th-century composers - among others Franz Schubert - composed many songs based on Goethe’s poems.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 7 minutes):

Franz Schubert: An den Mond (To the Moon) (Goethe) D 296