Klenze, Leo Von

Klenze, Leo von (lā`ō fən klĕn`tsə), 1784–1864, German architect and landscape and portrait painter. He was court architect to Jérôme Bonaparte of Westphalia and to Louis I of Bavaria, for whom he built many structures in the Italian Renaissance and neo-classical styles. His chief works in Munich were the Glyptothek (1816–30), the Pinakothek, and the Odeon (1828). In 1839 he began additions to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.

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Klenze, Leo Von 

Born Feb. 29, 1784, in Schladen, in present-day Lower Saxony, in the Federal Republic of Germany; died Jan. 27, 1864, in Munich. German architect.

Klenze, who studied in Germany, France, and Italy, was the court architect for Jérôme Bonaparte in Kassel from 1808 to 1813. Beginning in 1815 he held a similar position in the court of the Bavarian king Ludwig I in Munich. His public buildings in Munich (from 1816) and Athens (1839–51) are distinguished by a stately and austere regularity. In his massive and imposing buildings, such as the Glyptothek (1816–30, Munich), the Old Pinakothek (1826–36, Munich), and the New Hermitage (1839–52, Leningrad), Klenze combined various motifs from ancient Greek architecture, reproducing them with punctilious accuracy and coldness.

REFERENCE

Hederer, O. Leo von Klenze. Munich, 1964.