Background
Ignaz Günther was born in Altmannstein near Ingolstadt on November 22, 1725, the son of a cabinetmaker and sometime sculptor, who was also his first teacher.
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
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Ignaz Günther was born in Altmannstein near Ingolstadt on November 22, 1725, the son of a cabinetmaker and sometime sculptor, who was also his first teacher.
Günther was sent to Munich in 1743 and apprenticed to the sculptor Johann Baptist Straub, who had a large workshop and trained many artists.
Günther then enrolled at the academy in Vienna in early 1753, with Mathias Donner, brother of the great Georg Raphael Donner, among his teachers, and in November he won a first prize.
In 1750 Günther set out as a journeyman, going first to Salzburg and then to Mannheim, where he worked with Paul Egell, whose dramatic style he admired greatly, until Egell's death in 1752. Günther then enrolled at the academy in Vienna in early 1753, with Mathias Donner, brother of the great Georg Raphael Donner, among his teachers, and in November he won a first prize.
Günther returned to Munich to work on his own, but few of his early works remain. His first major commission was the high altar in Rott am Inn (1760 - 1762), where he produced some of his masterworks: notably the Holy Trinity above the high altar, the supremely elegant figures Emperor Heinrich and Empress Kunigunde in white and gold flanking it, and the realistic St. Peter Damian and St. Notburga in vivid color on the side altars.
These were followed by his major works in Weyarn, a small parish church not far from Munich, where his famous Annunciation (1764) is to be seen; one of the chief examples of European rococo sculpture, its gracefully curving forms are made doubly thrilling by the beauty of the polychromy and the elegance of the faces and gestures of the Madonna and the archangel Gabriel.
The highly emotional Pietà at Weyarn (1764), also in polychromed wood, is a dramatic version of the subject, not without its naive touches. Other works at Weyarn are an Immaculata, a Mater Dolorosa, some statues of saints, and the figures decorating several of the altars, notably the cherubs and cherub heads, with their fat cheeks and pensive expressions.
Its elongated and supernatural elegance is heightened by the contrast with the charmingly realistic little Bavarian child it leads by the hand. Günther also produced models for the ducal porcelain works of Nymphenburg (1771), as well as other works in Munich, such as altars in the church of St. Peter and five portals for the Cathedral, the Frauenkirche. In 1773 he was appointed court sculptor.
He died in Munich on June 26, 1775.
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)