Ernst Mayer was a German sculptor in the classical style.
Education
After elementary school, in 1810, Ernst Mayer was apprenticed to Antonio Isopi, the Italian sculptor working for the king. When he had finished his apprenticeship he worked for Isopi both in Ludwigsburg and in Wasseralfingen, where Isopi’s colossal sculptures of a lion and stag – still to be seen in front of the Stuttgart New Castle – were cast.
Career
He was a pupil of Antonio Isopi and worked for Leo von Klenze, mainly in Munich where in 1830 he became Professor of Sculpture at the Polytechnic, now the Technical University. Mayer was the ninth child of Johann Ernst Mayer (1754 – 1812), a stocking manufacturer, who had become master of the household and garden supervisor at the Ludwigsburg castle of Duke (later King) Friedrich I of Württemberg. From him he learned the crafts of sculpture, casting and ornament as well as the Italian language, which was beneficial to him on his later sojourn in Rome.
In 1818 Leo von Klenze invited the 22-year-old Ernst Mayer, together with Isopi, to Munich and employed him in his workshop.
From 1821 to 1825 Mayer was in Rome and again worked for von Wagner, who acquired antique statues for crown prince and future king Ludwig I of Bavaria. At the same tame he was employed by the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen, for whom he created reliefs for the Walhalla in Regensburg.
The two genii at the bottom of the monument are by Mayer. Back in Munich, Mayer continued restoring antique statues, but also created sculptures of his own, including the pediment figures for the Glyptothek building, among them three antique artists representing the crafts that Mayer himself practised: the modeller (Koroplastes), the bronze caster (Statuarius) and the stone sculptor (Glyptos).
In 1830 Mayer became Professor of Stone Sculpting at the Polytechnic in Munich.
Mayer died in Munich at the age of 47 on 21 January 1844 of a skull fracture after a fall on ice in front of his workshop. His successor at the Munich Polytechnic was his pupil Johann Halbig.