SCHINKEL, KARL FRIEDRICH

SCHINKEL, KARL FRIEDRICH, a very eminent German architect, was born on the 13th of March 1781, at Neuruppin, in Brandenburg. Having lost his father at an early age, he was placed by his mother at the gymnasium of his native town, where he remained till his fourteenth year, when he removed to Berlin. He soon found an entrance to the office of David Gilly, then an able practical architect; but he had hardly got fairly settled when his master died. Friedrich Gilly, his son, a youth of an ardent imagination, had just returned from his travels; and he began, full of hope and of ambition, to elevate architecture to the level of the other arts of design. His career was short, for he died in 1800, within two years after he had taken up his father's place. Schinkel was now left to pursue undivided the ambitious projects which the younger Gilly had designed, or if possible to realize higher architectural aims than either of his masters had entertained. Schinkel had already had considerable practical experience in the erection of buildings, and he now resolved to pursue his theoretical studies by a pilgrimage to Italy. Accordingly, in 1803, he set out, and after visiting Dresden, Prague, and Vienna, he entered the land sacred to art, and after spending a considerable time in minutely surveying all its architectural monuments, and noting down all its important architectural designs, he returned to Vienna in 1805, filled with the grandest imaginations which young wonder knows. The backward state of public affairs rendered his residence in Germany as an architect exceedingly problematical, and with a mind teeming with the richest art-knowledge, and aspiring after the richest field of development, he at once resolved to combine his architectural skill with his knowledge of landscape scenery, and to become a painter. Architecture, however, was still to hold the prominent part in his labours; the introduction of scenery was merely to act as an expression of his taste and imagination in the accessory portion of his work. It was at this time he executed his admirable panorama of Palermo; and he likewise designed numerous scenes for the theatre, which were greatly esteemed. Meanwhile, these labours with his brush had brought him prominently before the public, and on the restoration of order in 1815, he was chosen by the king to adorn the city of Berlin and its environs. Those who know the beauties of that graceful city, and the artificial adornments of the surrounding neighbourhood, can testify to how well Schinkel performed his task, and to how great an amount of originality of conception and boldness of design he expended upon the embellishment of the capital of Prussia. Among his earliest buildings are the Hauptwache, the Theatre, and the Museum of Berlin; all treated in a purely Hellenic style, the latter of which displays a fulness of ornamentation, combined with a simple severity of outline, such as had not been witnessed before in Germany. A very fair idea of the range of Schinkel's art-knowledge may be

Schlnznach gained from his Entwürfe (designs), which contain a complete gallery, with explanatory letterpress, of his unusually numerous and varied architectural productions. Besides presenting ready materials for a descriptive catalogue of his buildings, they likewise present a variety of six several designs for a monument to the great Friedrich, in which the artist had given the rein to his imagination, and indulged freely in the pomp of architectural circumstance and structural display. His Werke der höheren Baukunst exhibits a series of grand designs with which he proposed to adorn the acropolis of Athens, but the barrack-like fabric of Gürtner was preferred. Perhaps the most poetical of all Schinkel's designs was his plan of a summer palace for the Empress of Russia at Orianda, in the Crimea, overlooking the Black Sea. Besides being chosen professor in the Academy of Fine Arts at Berlin, and member of the Prussian Academical Senate, he had in 1839 the highest rank of his profession bestowed upon him. He was made "Oberlandesbaudirektor," but he did not long enjoy the honour. He died of an organic affection of the brain on the 9th of October 1841. Dr Kugler and O. F. Gruppe have both written biographies of Schinkel.