Otto Magnus von Stackelberg

Stackelberg worked between 1786 and 1837 across art historian, classical archaeologist, anthropologist, painter and classical scholar and 2 further recorded occupations. This article rests on 14 scholarly references drawn from named institutional registers. Every statement below returns to a source shown in the evidence panel; where the record is silent or divided, the article says so instead of resolving it.

Otto Magnus von Stackelberg studied at University of Göttingen. The recorded working language is French and German. The field of work recorded is history of art. Work by Otto Magnus von Stackelberg is recorded in the collections of National Museum of World Cultures and Art Museum of Estonia.

• Name — Otto Magnus von Stackelberg • Born — 25 July 1786 • Birthplace — Reval, Governorate of Estonia, Russian Empire • Died — 27 March 1837 • Place of death — St. Petersburg, Russian Empire • Occupation — * Classicist • archaeologist • art historian • writer • artist • Period — 1825–1837 • Subject — Art history and archaeology of ancient Greece and Rome • Movement — Classicism

• Illustration — Fähna (Vääna) manor, Estonia, where von Stackelberg spent his youth 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.

• Illustration — Image from his "Trachten und Gebräuche der Neugriechen" 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. • Illustration — Another of his engravings The trip to Greece was long and adventurous, setting out from Naples in July 1810 and not arriving in the Piraeus until September. At Athens, they were joined by the British architects and archaeologists John Foster and Charles Robert Cockerell. The group carried out excavations at several Greek sites – in 1811 at the Temple of Aphaia at Aegina, they removed the fallen fragmentary pediment sculptures and on von Hallerstein's recommendation shipped them abroad and sold them the following year to Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria; and in 1812 they exposed parts of the temple of Apollo at Bassae (the frieze they found on it is now in the British Museum) and Aeacus's temple of Zeus Panhellenios (Panhellenic Zeus), again at Aegina.

In autumn 1814, Stackelberg returned from Greece to his family in the Baltic States. He travelled to Italy again in 1816, researching antiquity and the Middle Ages as an art historian and becoming co-founder of the "Instituto Archeologico Germanico" in Rome. Together with Eduard Gerhard, August Kestner and Theodor Panofka, he also established in 1824 the "Hyperboreans" ("Römischen Hyperboraeer") there, a group of northern European scholars who studied classical ruins. Both were the precursors and embryonic stages of the later German Archaeological Institute. In 1826 Stackelberg's archaeological work was published as Der Apollotempel zu Bassae in Arcadien und die daselbst ausgegrabenen Bildwerke (The Temple of Apollo at Bassae in Arcadia, and the Wall-paintings excavated there), for which he also provided the drawings. Also during this time in Rome in the middle of his life, Stackelberg undertook further trips to Greece, to Turkey and within Italy. In Etruria in 1827 he discovered the Etruscan temple and hypogaeum at Corneto (now Tarquinia).

In 1828 Stackelberg left Rome and Italy for the last time. From 1829 to 1833 he lived once again in Germany, meeting there among others Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and travelling to England, France and the Netherlands. From 1835 he lived in Riga.

• Illustration — Title page of Die Gräber der Hellenen in Bildwerken und Vasengemälden • Costumes et usages des peuples de la Grèce moderne / Trachten und Gebräuche der Neugriechen (Costumes and customs of the peoples of modern Greece). Rome 1825. • Der Apollotempel zu Bassae in Arcadien und die daselbst ausgegrabenen Bildwerke. (The Temple of Apollo at Bassae in Arcadia, and the Wall-paintings excavated there). Rome 1826. • La Grèce. Vues pittoresques et topographiques, dessinus par O. M. baron de Stackelberg. (Greece - Picturesque views and topographic views, drawn by Otto Magnus, baron of Stackelberg). Paris 1830. • Die Gräber der Hellenen in Bildwerken und Vasengemälden (The Graves of the Greeks in Wall-paintings and Vase-paintings). Berlin 1837. Accessible on Universität Heidelberg.

Otto Magnus von Stackelberg was born on 1 January 1786 in Tallinn. Stackelberg held the nationality of Russian Empire. Stackelberg was educated at University of Göttingen (1803). Recorded father: Otto Christian Engelbrecht von Stackelberg. Recorded mother: Anna Gerdruta von Stackelberg. Stackelberg worked as art historian, classical archaeologist, anthropologist and painter, and the authority record catalogues a further 3 occupations under the same name, among them classical scholar, archaeologist and writer. Stackelberg worked in French and German.

The record carries the affiliation itself; it makes no claim about Stackelberg's standing within the field beyond what those bodies state.