Prometheus

The sculpture is a modello for a pewter sculpture, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, that is dated to 1759. It shows Prometheus chained to a rock, with an eagle tearing at his liver. Hagenauer received his art training at the Vienna Academy from 1754; in 1759-1765 he lived and worked in Italy and later settled in Salzburg. From 1771/1772 until the end of his life he taught at the Vienna Academy. Hagenauer’s work marks a stylistic shift from the Late Baroque to the Neoclassical style. He was influenced by Georg Raphael Donner whose distinct sense of plasticity and modelling was chiefly based on his experience from working in a variety of materials, from wood and plaster to marble; he also made cast metal sculptures and medals. Even the modello renders what is discernible in the finished cast sculpture - the perfect ability to express through modelling the rough texture of the rock as well as the soft tissue of Prometheus’s muscular body, and the eagle’s plumage.