Carl Friedrich von Rumohr

Carl Friedrich von Rumohr (6 January 1785 – 25 July 1843) was a German art historian, writer, draughtsman and painter, agricultural historian, connoisseur of and writer about the culinary arts, art collector and patron of artists.

Carl Friedrich von Rumohr was born into an ancient aristocratic family and grew up on the family estates in Holstein near Lübeck. He went to the University of Göttingen 1802-1804 where he studied Classical philology with Christian Gottlob Heyne, History (Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren) and Mathematics (Bernhard Friedrich Thibaut); he took drawing lessons with Johann Dominik Fiorillo who also introduced him to Art history and the critical reading of Vasari. At university he came into contact with the Romantic movement around Ludwig Tieck and converted in 1804 to Catholicism together with the brothers Riepenhausen. Inheriting a large fortune after the death of his father he went with Tieck and the brothers Riepenhausen on a study trip to Rome (1805-1806) where he met the group of German artists (among others, Joseph Anton Koch) living and working there and acquired the foundations of his expertise of the classical arts. On his return journey he was introduced in Frankfurt to the circle around Clemens Brentano.

The following years he spent on his estates in Holstein while travelling extensively and meeting many personalities from the German cultural elite of his days. Of importance for the development of his thinking was his contact in the years 1806/1807 in Munich with the Naturphilosophie of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. He undertook studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich and befriended the son of the director, Johann Peter von Langer. He made his first important contribution to Art history with the publication in 1812 of: Über die antike Gruppe Castor und Pollux ….

...
Wikipedia