Overview
Franz Ittenbach was born in 1813 in the enchanting town of Königswinter, nestled along the Rhine’s River banks. The youngest child of ten, Ittenbach was born into a devout Catholic family. After a successful exhibition in 1831 in Cologne, he was admitted into the Düsseldorf Academy the following year at age 19, where he became a private pupil of the Academy’s president Freidrich Wilhelm Shadow.
In 1839, he travelled to Rome with Shadow, remaining in Italy for three years to explore the masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance and the works of the Nazarene school, whose faith animated their work. In 1842 he returned to Germany inspired to devote his energies to church decoration. Travelling and painting altarpieces and various religious commissions across Germany, his popularity grew among the German Catholic nobility; he decorated the private chapels at the palaces of the Prince of Liechtenstein in Vienna and the Duke of Hamilton in Baden-Baden. His finest paintings are found in the church of St Remigius at Bonn and Breslau. In 1849, he returned to Düsseldorf, where he died in 1879.
A leading ecclesiastical painter in 19th century Germany, Franz Ittenback continued the tradition of the Nazarene movement through his prolific output of religious art executed harmoniously and with sincere devotion.