At the heart of the work of Franz Xaver Messerschmidt (1736–1783) are the so-called Character heads, which remain a puzzle to this day despite their fame. Since the twentieth century it has been popular to interpret Messerschmidt’s work from a psychopathological perspective. Yet this is a narrow lens through which to view the objects and ignores the fact that the sculptor was responding to the profound social and scientific changes of the eighteenth century. The Belvedere is dedicating an exhibition to Messerschmidt that presents him as an artist at a cultural and political turning point in history and as a trailblazer of the so-called long nineteenth century.

From around 1769 Messerschmidt’s portraits reflected a new image of humanity, permeated with the ideas of the Enlightenment: pomp and display were now secondary to a more simplified and apt characterization of the sitter. Moreover, the personalities portrayed—such as the doctors Gerard van Swieten and Franz Anton Mesmer or the art theorist Franz von Scheyb—shed light on the cultural, political, and scientific world of the eighteenth century.

The exhibition further aims to place Messerschmidt’s Character heads, which he started working on around 1770, in the context of the study of facial expressions and physiognomy and to read them as a phenomenon of their time. Comparisons with works by artists such as Joseph Ducreux will help convey that the fascination with the face (and its aberrations) was by no means unique in this period.

(Curated by Katharina Lovecky, Georg Lechner and Axel Köhne)