Johann Caspar Füssli

Johann Caspar Füssli (Jan 3, 1706 - May 6, 1782) was a Swiss portrait painter.

He was born in Zurich to Hans Rudolf Füssli, who was also a painter, and Elisabeth Schärer.

He influenced the ideas of the Enlightenment, influenced by classicism, and lived in lively exchange with important artists and writers in France, Germany and Italy, among them Klopstock, Wieland, A.R. Mengs, Solimena, and J.J. Winckelmann.

He studied painting in Vienna between 1724 and 1731, and then became a portraitist in the courts of southern Germany.

In 1736, he returned to Zurich, where he painted the members of the Government and figures of the Enlightenment era such as Johann Jakob Bodmer or Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock. He died in Zurich.

In 1754-1757 he published the partly very subjectively held, three-dimensional story and depiction of the best Mahler in the Schweitz with 37 etchings of R. Füssli as imagery vignettes.

1769-1779, the work was again published in a completely revised version in five volumes titled History of the best artists in the Schweitz, together with their portraits, with 137 portraits made by various artists.

As early as 1758, Füssli published the lives of the famous painters Rugendas and Kupetzky, whom he had met during his stay in southern Germany.

In 1762 he moved A. R. Mengs' thoughts on beauty. In 1778 his story of Winckelmann's letters to his friends in Switzerland appeared as an epilogue to the edition of Winckelmann's letters by L. Usteri. Soon afterwards the extensive collection of Füssli's work led to the publication of the list of the most distinguished copper cutters and their works, the use of collectors and lovers (1771).

After a long period of preparation, which was above all due to the quality of the figures, the knight Johann Carl Hedlinger followed a medal with a preface Füsslis and 80 plates in Mezzotinto technique.

He married Elisabeth Waser, and they had the following children:
Hans Rudolf Füssli
Johann Heinrich Füssli, painter
Johann Kaspar Füssli, painter and entomologist
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