Ludwig Thiersch

Ludwig Thiersch ( Munich, April 12, 1825 – id. May 10, 1909) was a German painter, primarily of mythological and religious subjects and especially of ecclesiastical art, also influential in Greece.

Thiersch was born in Munich, the son of classicist and philhellene Friedrich Thiersch, and brother of surgeon Karl Thiersch and theologian H. W. J. Thiersch. He attended the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich to study sculpture, but after a few years turned to painting, in which he became a student of Heinrich Maria von Hess, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, and Karl Schorn. After the Academy, he painted a depiction of Sakuntala (1848) and a scene of Camisards, and then traveled to Rome, where he sketched scenes from daily Italian life and painted Hiob unter seinen Freunden.

In 1852, he traveled with his father to Athens, where he replaced Rafaello Ceccoli at the Athens School of Fine Arts and became interested in Byzantine art. He painted several frescoes in Greek churches, and was at the forefront of a movement to "modernize" Byzantine art by introducing elements from Western art such as naturalistic perspective and anatomy. In this, he is sometimes credited with discovering Byzantine art for the world of modern art, but such reform was controversial in Greece, finding fierce opposition from those opposed to what they saw as attempts to replace longstanding Greek traditions with foreign ones. Several newspaper editorials opposed Thiersch's appointment as Professor, and continued to oppose his receipt of commissions to paint church frescoes. However, Westernizing reforms were favored by the Bavarian monarchy of King Otto, as well as by Lysandros Kaftantzoglou (), a prominent architect and head of the Athens Polytechnic, and so his opponents were largely unsuccessful.

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