Julius Allgeyer

'Julius Allgeyer,' painted in 1857 and now in the Bavarian State Painting Collections, is a portrait of one of Feuerbach's closest friends and his most devoted early champion. Julius Allgeyer (1829–1900) was a German engraver and art photographer who became Feuerbach's primary biographer, later editing his posthumous memoir 'Ein Vermächtnis.' The two met in the German artistic community in Rome during the late 1850s, and Allgeyer's loyalty — practical, financial, and emotional — sustained Feuerbach through years of professional disappointment. A portrait of a friend made in 1857 belongs to Feuerbach's consolidating Roman period, when he was moving away from his earlier academic training toward the classical Italian manner that would define his mature work. The painting offers a direct, unidealized likeness, contrasting with the classically elevated beauty Feuerbach pursued in his mythological figures — an indication that he could adapt his register according to the sitter and the relationship.

The portrait is direct and psychologically forthright, positioning Allgeyer without elaborate props or background narrative. Feuerbach employs a warm, sombre palette consistent with his Roman work of the late 1850s, modelling the sitter's face with the same sculptural clarity he brought to his mythological figures. The composition follows the traditional three-quarter bust format with a plain ground.