- Museum number
- 1873,0809.979
- Title
- Series: Bilder zu Goethes Faust
- Description
-
Title-plate (plate 1) with the lettering surrounded by figures representing the two sides of Faust's character; from the portfolio of 12 illustrating Goethe's 'Faust', Frankfurt 1816, as re-published by G.Reimer in Berlin in 1845
Engraving
- Production date
- 1816
- Dimensions
-
Height: 485 millimetres
-
Width: 580 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Text from Antony Griffiths and Frances Carey, 'German Printmaking in the Age of Goethe', BM 1994, no.117.
The first part of Goethe's 'Faust' was published in 1808, many years after much of it had been written, and caused quite as great a sensation as had 'Werther' thirty-four years before. Cornelius began his first illustration to it in 1810, and by April 1811 had completed five drawings. The subsequent history and development of this and the two contemporaneous 'Niebelungen' and 'Romeo and Juliet' series are very well documented in letters between the Boisserée brothers, Goethe and Cornelius (published by Förster pp.77-88), and from Cornelius to his publishers Wenner and Reimer (published by Riegel 1883, pp.210-83).
Sulpiz Boisserée (see 1860,0114.150), a friend of Cornelius, showed five drawings to Goethe in Weimar in May 1811, and then to the Berlin publisher Reimer at the Leipzig book fair. Goethe received them well, and wrote a letter of encouragement to Cornelius (translated in John Gage, ed. 'Goethe on art', 1980 p.235) while Reimer asked what Cornelius's terms might be. Meanwhile Cornelius had had the good fortune to meet the Frankfurt printer and publisher Johann Friedrich Wenner (1772-1835), who was to act more as a patron than a publisher to him. On the weekend of 1-4 June Cornelius and his friend Christian Xeller accompanied Wenner, his wife and a small party of other friends on a weekend walking tour in the Taunus mountains. This was such a success that Wenner decided to publish an illustrated account of it. Two plates after Cornelius's drawings were prepared for this abortive publication, and are consequently of the greatest rarity.
With Boisserée acting as middleman, Wenner under-took to meet Cornelius's terms which were laid out in a letter of 29 June: the work should be dedicated to Goethe, Cornelius should be left a free hand in dealings with the engraver (whom he originally hoped would be a Frankfurt friend Schulz), and should be paid 100 Louis d'or in advance so that he could finish the series in Rome "where the environment best stimulates an artist". But Schulz could not come to Rome, and Cornelius had great trouble in finding someone competent in Italy. It was not until 15 May 1813 that he reported that Ferdinand Ruscheweyh was at work on the first plate. Ruscheweyh, a slightly younger contemporary from Neustrelitz in Mecklenberg, had already arrived in Rome in 1808 and was to remain there until 1832, becoming the leading engraver in the Nazarene circle (for his biography, see Mainz 1993, pp. 169-70). Several panic-striken letters from Cornelius were necessary before Wenner agreed to pay him 20 Louis d'or a plate: Ruscheweyh was in desperate straits until the money arrived, and Cornelius had to remind Wenner that nothing is poorer under the sun than an artist in Rome' and lured him with a promise to send him an impression of the finished plate that would "electrify" him.
From this point, work speeded ahead. Cornelius was delighted with Ruscheweyh's work, and quickly decided to give him all the remaining plates. By Easter 1816 Wenner could publish the first part, of four plates, and the second part followed later that year. A third part of three plates followed in 1817 or 1818. The twelfth plate (the third in the published sequence) only followed in 1825 as the result of an accident: Julius Thaeter (1804-70), a young engraver in Dresden saw the unused drawing for the 'Easter promenade' in a private collection, and obtained permission to engrave it on his own account, only subsequently selling the plate to Wenner.
The engravings follow very precisely the highly-finished drawings (reproduced most recently in 'Peter Cornelius, Zeichnungen zu Goethes Faust', Städel Frankfurt 1991). Cornelius and Ruscheweyh must have spent weeks together in correcting the proofs, and in this way together achieved the masterpiece of the Nazarene revival of engraving.
The first edition with Wenner's address and the date 1816 was printed in small numbers, and remains rare. After Wenner's death in 1835, all the drawings were sold to the Städel in Frankfurt, and the plates were purchased by G. Reimer in Berlin. He (or rather his son) reissued them in 1845 with a new title page with his name replacing Wenner's, but with no date. This edition (1873,0809.979-990) is even rarer than the first, and it was not until a Jubilee edition was printed in 1916 that the prints became widely known. (This account is taken from Stephan Seeliger, 'Zur Editionsgeschichte der Faust-Bilder von Peter Cornelius', 'Aus dem Antiquariat', vii 1988, pp.277-83.)
Cornelius's 'Faust' illustrations are perhaps his masterpiece, and rival Delacroix's famous lithographs of 1825-8. The drawings show an astonishing strength in characterisation and dramatic force, and Ruscheweyh's engravings do them full justice. In the scene exhibited her, the Evil Spirit whispers into Gretchen's ear, and reminds her of her previous innocence and present fall, while the choir sings the 'Dies Irae'; at the far left is a self-portrait of Cornelius himself. The titleplate and dedication are based on Dürer's marginal illustrations to Maximilian's 'Book of Hours', which Cornelius knew from Strixner's copies (1973,u.1171), and which Goethe had specifically recommended to him as an exemplar in his letter of 1811. Goethe's own favourite illustrations to 'Faust' were those by Moritz Retzsch, published by Cotta in 1816 on Goethe's recommendation, and which are now semi-forgotten.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1994 BM, 'German printmaking in the Age of Goethe', cat.117
2014-15 Sept - Jan.London, BM, Witches and Wicked Bodies
- Associated titles
Associated Title: Faust
- Acquisition date
- 1873
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1873,0809.979