Benjamin Calau

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Benjamin Calau (* 1724 in Friedrichstadt ; † 1785 in Berlin ) was a visual artist in Berlin in the 18th century.

Life

Calau's father, the painter Christoph Callau / Kallau († 1753), taught him and his two brothers who were also artistically active in drawing. From 1749 to 1771 Benjamin lived in Leipzig - there he was in 1755 electoral Saxon court painter. Before 1770 he undertook numerous experiments in the field of wax painting and "encaustic painting". This procedure, which had existed since antiquity and was described by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis historia , had been lost since the 6th century. Calau did not reconstruct the Roman encaustic , but he developed his own method of painting in wax, which was also useful in practice. To this end, he published in 1769 the text Detailed attempts to dissolve the Punic or Eleodoric wax .

In Berlin people were fascinated by this technology, so that Calau was based there since 1771. Here he became the court painter of Frederick II and became a member of the Academy of Arts. In 1772 he received a Prussian privilege for the distribution of his wax colors, the exact composition of which is no longer known today. In the same wax color painting he also made nine portraits for the famous “Temple of Friendship” of the poet Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim in Halberstadt . In the last years of his life, Calau, who was already active in the arts and crafts sector at the beginning of his time in Berlin, used wax paints to paint mainly porcelain and faience and eventually became a wallpaper manufacturer.

literature

  • Heinrich Heldt: The Berlin court painter Benjamin Calau (1724–1785) from Friedrichstadt. In: Society for Schleswig-Holstein History (Hrsg.): Nordelbingen: Contributions to the art and cultural history of Schleswig-Holstein. Vol. 74, Heide / Holstein 2005.
  • Susanne Geese: Calau, Benjamin. In: Günter Meissner (Ed.): General Artist Lexicon. The visual artists of all times and peoples. Vol. 15: Bucki-Campagnari. KG Saur Verlag, Munich / Leipzig 1997, p. 553.

Web links

Commons : Benjamin Calau  - collection of images, videos and audio files
  • Painting by Benjamin Calau in the Gleimhaus, Halberstadt