Roman Anton Boos

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Roman Anton Boos ( Bavarian State Library )
Self-portrait, around 1790, in the Bavarian National Museum

Roman Anton Boos (born February 28, 1733 in Bischofswang near Roßhaupten , † December 19, 1810 ) was a German sculptor .

biography

Roman Anton Boos was born on February 28, 1733 in the small village of Bischofswang , part of the parish of Roßhaupten , as the son of the farmer Joseph Boos and his wife Katharina. The father recognized his son's talent and therefore agreed to an apprenticeship with the well-known sculptor Anton Sturm in nearby Füssen. This was followed by his wandering, of which it is only certain that Boos entered the workshop of the then leading Munich sculptor Johann Baptist Straub , of which he, with a few interruptions, belonged until 1769. In 1763 Boos attended classes for sculptors with Jacob Schletterer at the Vienna Academy , and Boos completed his academic training at the Municipal Academy in Augsburg.

The tomb of the royal court pages is in the Old Munich South Cemetery .
Statue of Pallas Athene (1777), in the Nymphenburg palace gardens
Statue of Venus (1778), in the Nymphenburg Palace Park

In 1765 he returned to Munich and completed his first known commission a year later: the donor figures Ludwig the Strict and Ludwig the Bavarian for the Cistercian monastery church in Fürstenfeld . In the same year the founding of a private drawing school , the Elector Maximilian III. Joseph 1770 as a “public drawing school, resp. Painter and Sculptor Academy for the Advancement and Admission of the Arts ”. Boos and the other co-founders, the painter Franz Ignaz Oefele and the stucco worker Franz Xaver Feuchtmayer , intended to use a Bavarian art school to make the electorate independent of foreign academies and foreign artists and to bring it to a new, independent art. Boos achieved his breakthrough in the royal seat of Munich in 1768 with the sculptural decoration on the church facade of St. Kajetan , which Ignaz Günther was initially commissioned with, but who failed because of the stone work.

The following 15 years, in which Boos worked primarily for the electoral court, were the most successful of his career. From 1770 to 1772 he created four mythological groups that are no longer preserved and a river god, which has also been lost, for the Schleißheim palace gardens . A year later, on July 23, 1773, Maximilian III. Joseph Boos was given the job of court sculptor with an annual salary of 300 guilders, but Boos was only able to move up to this position in September 1774 after the death of the previous court sculptor Charles de Grof. With the death of de Grof, Boos received the order for the statue of Amphitrite, which should belong to a series of statues of ancient gods for the ground floor of the Nymphenburg palace gardens . The Salzburg sculptor Johann Baptist von Hagenauer was to take over the execution of the statues Apollo, Diana, Ceres and Baccus, while Ignaz Günther was to execute Mars, Pallas, Mercury and Venus. The execution of the statues of Jupiter, Juno, Pluto and Proserpina was assigned to Johann Baptist Straub . In the end, these statues were also executed by Boos, since Ignaz Günther also died in 1775 and so the court building department also entrusted the new court sculptor to work on the statues that should have been made by the late Günther. Hagenauer, who in the meantime had settled in Vienna and, after Schletterer's death, had taken on the position of teacher in the sculpture class at the academy there, had gotten out of reach of the Munich court, so that Boos was also assigned Hagenauer's orders. By 1785 Boos had created nine statues for the Nymphenburg Cycle, which was not complete until 1792 after Dominik Auliczek had executed the remaining statues of Pluto, Proserpina, Jupiter and Juno. On May 12, 1777, he married the 26-year-old daughter of his teacher Johann Baptist Straub, Maria Theresia Amalia, and moved into the house of his father-in-law at today's Hackenstrasse 10.

Ornamental vase in the Nymphenburg Palace Park, Munich
A wide variety of themes from ancient legends are depicted on the decorative vases on the ground floor in the Nymphenburg Palace Park.

Boos' work for Nymphenburg did not end with the nine statues for the Nymphenburg cycle. From 1788 to 1798 he supplied 12 marble vases with mythological scenes, which were placed between the statues on the garden ground floor . In addition to the extensive work for Nymphenburg, the deeds of Hercules completed in 1781 in larger-than-life wooden groups, which replaced a series created by Kaspar Riedl around 1630 in the Hofgarten arcades of the Munich Residence , represented the second major and honorable commission of the electoral court. He supported him in this Franz Joseph Muxel (1745-1812).

After Günther's death and as a result of Straub's infirmity, Boos received several commissions from the church, but without ever being able to reap the same success as the older sculptors. Even his most extensive and most important sacred work, the new pulpit built in 1780 in the Frauenkirche in Munich , of which only individual parts are preserved in the Bavarian National Museum today, did not receive the same recognition that his Nymphenburg statues were given.

The sacred works for the royal seat of Munich were followed by decorative work for the choir altar of the St. Johann Nepomuk Church in 1783 and the monument in the form of two tondi for the Bürgersaal Church in memory of Pope Pius VI's stay in Munich in 1786 . in 1782. Boos created the ten Marian reliefs for the high altar and the four reliefs with depictions of the life of Christ for the choir wall of the Benedictine monastery church in Ettal in 1788 and 1790. The three pairs of putti date from 1789 as personifications of the divine virtues and a reclining figure of St. . Franz Xaver in the Benediktbeuern monastery church . The pulpit and the crucifix in the parish church of St. James the Elder in Hörgertshausen near Moosburg date from 1791 . Boos carried out the last church commission in 1796: the four evangelists in the collegiate church of Altötting .

As a leading Munich sculptor, Boos also attracted students who supported him in his numerous tasks: Joseph Muxel worked in the Hercules groups in 1780; In 1784 he was appointed court sculptor himself. Ignaz Alexander Breitenauer joined the workshop in 1777 and worked on the execution of the Nymphenburg statues of Baccus, Ceres, Apollo and Diana, in 1785 Breitenauer was appointed court sculptor to Eichstätt . In the same year, Franz Jakob Schwanthaler also completed a short apprenticeship with Boos. Konrad Eberhard even stayed in his workshop for ten years, from 1796 to 1806, before setting off for Rome on a grant from the court building department.

Tomb of the sculptor Roman Anton Boos on the outer wall of St. Stephen's Church in the Old Southern Cemetery in Munich

The general lack of orders even brought the court sculptor Boos into financial difficulties, and the ten-year work on the vases for the Nymphenburg Palace Park only improved his situation slightly. Boos switched to smaller commissioned works such as the tomb of the royal court pages in the Old Southern Cemetery in Munich .

Elector Karl Theodor strictly rejected the proposal made by the court building authorities in 1786 and 1799 to rebuild the inspector's position in the Antiquarium , which was the last to be held by Giuseppe Volpini , and instead only allowed individual busts to be cleaned and repaired once. In view of his unpaid work at the academy , the court building department considered in 1792 that Boos could be equated with the salary of 800 guilders to the professors employed in Mannheim and Düsseldorf. After all, he was paid 200 guilders on March 1, 1793. His suggestion from 1799 that some beautiful things could be installed in the Nymphenburg palace garden as well as in the electoral garden at Karlstor , however, did not meet with a response from either the elector or the court building authorities. In 1802 he again asked for a salary increase without success. A fund of 600 guilders set up specifically for Boos was to be used for a work on a public court or state building to be determined by General Director Johann Christian von Mannlich . But since the sum was too small for a larger order, Boos was engaged in restoring the Hercules groups in the courtyard garden , which he had created himself over 20 years ago.

In 1805 there was another chance of a public commission for figures for two fountains, which were to be built on the new square at the former Kapuzinergraben. Both Boos and his former student Joseph Muxel submitted sketches, which the chief building director Johann Andreas Gärtner found beautiful and splendid, but this assessment already indicates that neither of the two drafts was up for discussion. Instead, Gärtner pleaded for a simple obelisk that would look better there and would also be cheaper. This meant the end of the artistic career of the now 72-year-old royal sculptor Roman Anton Boos, who suffered yet another defeat little later: the director of the antiquities hall was Peter Simon Lamine appointed from Mannheim, of him of the April 10, 1806 as Director The academy's sculptor class was ousted. When the academy was redesigned in 1808, his participation was no longer even up for discussion.

Boos died on December 19, 1810 at the age of 77. The only living son, Joseph, had embarked on a military career and was at the time of the opening of the will on December 27, 1810 royal first lieutenant. The older daughter Crescentia had married the merchant Schiechtl, and the unmarried daughter Maria Anna had been entrusted to the guardianship of his former pupil Franz Jakob Schwanthaler. On May 10, 1816, his wife Theresia Amalia Boos died. The joint tomb of the couple is on the old southern cemetery in Munich site and is embedded in addition to that of Straub in the western exterior wall of St. Stephen's Church at the entrance of the cemetery.

Works (selection)

literature

  • Juliane von Åkerman: Roman Anton Boos (Bos) . In: Jürgen Wurst, Alexander Langheiter (Ed.): Monachia . Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-88645-156-9 , p. 95.
  • R. Johnen: Roman Anton Boos. Elector's court sculptor in Munich 1733–1810 . In: Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst , NF 12, 1937/38, pp. 281–320.
  • Uta Schedler: Roman Anton Boos (1733-1810). Sculptor between Rococo and Classicism . (Schnell and Steiner artist library). Schnell + Steiner, Munich and Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-7954-0370-7
  • Wilhelm Adolf Schmidt:  Boos, Roman Anton . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1876, p. 139.
  • Gerhard Woeckel:  Boos, Roman Anton. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1955, ISBN 3-428-00183-4 , p. 452 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Klaus Wankmiller: Roman Anton Boos (1733-1810). A search for traces in his closer home . On the 200th anniversary of the death of the sculptor from Bischofswang near Roßhaupten , in: Alt Füssen - Yearbook of the Historical Association Alt Füssen (2010), pp. 70–80.

Web links

Commons : Roman Anton Boos  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hyacinth Holland:  Muxel, Franz Joseph . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 23, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1886, p. 121 f.
  2. ^ Juliane Reister: Fountain art & water games . Walks in 10 Munich districts. München-Verlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-937090-26-9 , pp. 53 .
personal data
SURNAME Boos, Roman Anton
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH February 28, 1733
PLACE OF BIRTH Bischofswang near Roßhaupten
DATE OF DEATH December 19, 1810