Anselm Feuerbach (September 12, 1829—January 4, 1880), German painter, born at Speyer, the son of a well-known archaeologist, was the leading classicist painter of the German19th-century school. He was the first to realize the danger arising from contempt of technique, that mastery of craftsmanship was needed to express even the loftiest ideas, and that an ill-drawn coloured cartoon can never be the supreme achievement in art. After having passed through the art schools of Düsseldorf and Munich, he went to Antwerp and subsequently to Paris, where he benefited by the teaching of Couture, and produced his first masterpiece, "Hafiz at the Fountain" in 1852. He subsequently worked at Karlsruhe, Venice (where he fell under the spell of the greatest school ol colourists), Rome and Greek art. Disappointed with the reception given in Vienna to his design of "The Fall of the Titans" for the ceiling of the Museum of Modelling, he went to live in Venice, where he died in 1880.
His works are to be found at the leading public galleries of Germany; Stuttgart has his "Iphigenia"; Karlsruhe, the "Dante at Ravenna"; Munich, the "Medea"; and Berlin, "The Concert", his last important picture. Among his chief works are also "The Battle of the Amazons", "Pietà", "The Symposium of Plato", "Orpheus and Eurydice" and "Ariosto in the Park of Ferrara".
The eldest son, Joseph Anselm, became a noted archaeologist and was father of the famous German painter, AnselmFeuerbach, The second son, Edward, became a professor of jurisprudence, and the third, Karl, became a mathematician after whom a proof was named.
Feuerbach argues that Hegel's speculative metaphysics of "pure spirit" really must be understood as the culmination of movement that originated in the speculative theology of the Middle Ages when the naïve notion of a personal deity was conceptualized as an infinite, omniscient, omni-benevolent, necessary being.
Feuerbach had concluded from this that one of the most important philosophical and cultural tasks of his generation was to revise the way human beings thinking about the relationship of mind to nature because it was the notion of "spirit" that was crucial to both idealism and Christianity.
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