Details of Sculptor

Surname

Schadow

Alternative Surname

First Name

Rudolph (Rudolf)

Initial of Surname

S

Year of Birth/Baptism

1786

Flourished

Year of Death

1822

Biographical Details

Schadow was born in Rome on 9 June 1786, a son of the great German sculptor Johann Gottfried Schadow. He trained in his father’s studio in Berlin, before departing to work in Rome with his brother, Wilhelm. In 1811 he took over the studio of his compatriot, Daniel Christian Rauch. He is recorded in the memoirs of G A Guattani as completing a Filatrice for ‘un signore inglese’ before 1816 (quoted in JKB 1972 (3), 324). The patron is not identified, but several copies of the work were produced, one of which was bought by the 6th Duke of Devonshire (3). Devonshire also commissioned two reliefs from the German, which take their subject from Apollodorus (5). In a surviving letter, which demonstrates something of Schadow’s care about the reception of his works, the sculptor asked that they should be displayed so that the light fell upon them from the left. All three works are neoclassical and show the influence of Bertel Thorvaldsen.
Schadow appears to have been one of the sculptors that a grand tourist would expect to visit in Rome. Around 1818 he was commissioned to produce a monument for an English patron (1). Gilbert, 2nd Earl of Minto visited the workshop with the poet Samuel Rogers early in 1822 and recorded that Schadow was ‘a Prussian artist of merit: some good things’ (quoted by Iain Gordon Brown in Clifford 1995, 75). He died on 31 January 1822 in Rome.
Literary References: JKB 1972 (3), 324-6, 331; Springer 1977, 249-276; Chalmers Johnson 1983, 113-117; Schmitz 1986, 320-321; Schmitz 1991, 60-61; Spitzer 1993, 58-73; Clifford 1995, 75; Grove 1996, 28, 45-6 (Jutta von Simson)