Otto Magnus von Stackelberg (archaeologist)

Otto Magnus von Stackelberg
Otto Magnus von Stackelberg
Born	25 July 1786 Tallinn, Governorate of Estonia, Russian Empire
Died	27 March 1837 St Petersburg, Russian Empire
Occupation	Classicist, archaeologist, art historian, writer, artist
Nationality	Baltic German (born in present-day Estonia)
Period	1825–1837
Subject	Art history and archaeology of ancient Greece and Rome
Literary movement	Classicism

Count Otto Magnus Baron von Stackelberg (25 July 1786 – 27 March 1837) was one of the first archaeologists, as well as a writer, painter and art historian.

He was born in Reval (Tallinn), Estonia to Otto Christian Engelbrecht von Stackelberg and Anna Gertruda Düker. His father, an Oberst (Colonel) in the Russian Imperial corps, died six years later in 1792. The young Otto showed an early predilection for music, unlike his brothers, who like many young men at the time were mainly interested in riding, fighting and hunting. His mother, recognising talent in his early drawings, arranged for the German painter Reus to come to the family estate at Fähna (Vääna) to act as Otto's tutor.

Originally destined for the diplomatic corps, he began his studies at the University of Göttingen in 1803. Later that same year he travelled to Zurich with two of his brothers, a journey that was to have a great impact on his life. There he saw pictures by Johann Caspar Lavater and Salomon Geßner and visited Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. After wintering in Geneva he continued with his brother Karl to Italy, where the initial thoughts he had had at Zurich of devoting his life to the arts flourished. A stay in Dresden to study painting followed in 1804 but the following year he continued his diplomatic studies in Moscow. By now his mother had realized that her son was not suited for the diplomatic service and from then on Stackelberg dedicated himself to art and increasingly to archaeology.

A second period of study at Göttingen followed, along with (between 1806 and 1808) time at a gallery at Dresden. In autumn 1808, he set out on a second Italian trip, this time accompanied by Ernst Heinrich Tölken. On their way to Italy, they encountered Jean Paul in Bayreuth and visited the gallery at Schleißheim palace near Munich. They reached Rome in 1809 and there met and became friends with the archaeologist and art historian Carl Haller von Hallerstein, the Danish archaeologists and philologists Peter Oluf Brondsted and Georg Koës, the German painter Jakob Linckh, and the then Austrian consul in Greece George Christian Gropius. Bröndsted and Koës persuaded Stackelberg to accompany them on their trip to Greece. They intended to produce an archaeological publication upon their return, for which Stackelberg would produce landscapes.