Goethe-Gallery

Johann Gottfried Herder

The best-known faces of Weimar Classicism — Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, and Herder — have been handed down to posterity as busts by the court sculptor Klauer, whom Anna Amalia brought to Weimar in 1773. Klauer united a naturalism of the faces with a classicizing formal idealism. This allowed even Herder, the general superintendent and religious dignitary, to be represented in antiquizing form with a bare upper body and frontally oriented head.