Carstens

Carstens, Asmus Jakob (1751-1798), a Danish artist, who did much to better the condition of art in Germany. At the age of 22 he went to study art at Copenhagen, and after practising for some years as a portrait painter at Lubeck, he went to Berlin, where his great picture, The Fall of the Angels, gained him a professorship at the Academy, a pension, and court employment. He then went to Rome and studied the works of Raphael and Michael Angelo, and inculcated a taste for high art into the German painters. He mostly represented scenes from the ancient classics, as well as subjects from Shakespeare and Ossian. Eventually he severed his connection with the Berlin Academy, and finally died in poverty at Rome.