Piloty

Piloty, KARL VON, head of the new Munich school of painters, was born in that city on 1st October 1826, studied at its academy, and sat at the feet of Schnorr and Schorn and the modern French and Belgian masters of colour. In 1856 he was appointed professor of Painting at the Munich Academy, and in 1874 succeeded Kaulbach as director of the same. He died in his native city on 21st July 1886. All his best pictures belong to the class of historical genre; several of them adorn the sumptuous palaces of art built by the Bavarian kings at their capital, as the Maximilianium and the New Pinakothek. Piloty was a pronounced realist; he strove to reproduce nature exactly, even to the minutest details, but did not steer clear of the dangers that beset the endeavour to carry out these principles to their most rigorous conclusions. He distorts the relative importance of essentials and subordinate details, and, in spite of his skill as a portraitist, his pictures frequently have a theatrical air. His drawing was strictly objective; but he allowed his personal tastes all the more freedom in the choice of subject and in the employment of colour. Most of his pictures have melancholy subjects and a pathetic effect or sad background; amongst the best of them may be quoted 'Seni beside the Body of Wallenstein,' 'Nero amid the Ruins of Rome,' 'Wallenstein's March upon Eger,' 'Galilei in Prison,' 'Columbus,' 'Death of Cæsar,' 'Announcement of the Sentence of Death to Mary Stuart,' 'Thusnelda in the Triumph of Germanics,' and 'Death of Alexander the Great.' Piloty was an excellent teacher, his principal endeavour being to develop the individual genius of his pupils, amongst whom were Makart, Defregger, Leubach, Max, Dietz, and others. See the Art Journal for 1865; Mrs Howitt-Watts' Art-student in Munich (2d ed. 1879); and Rosenberg, Die Münchener Malerschule (1887).