The faces are contorted into exaggerated grimaces: one with a furrowed brow and raised chin, the other with narrowed eyes and a curled nose. At first glance, they might seem like the provocative work of a contemporary artist, but the inscription on the wall leaves no doubt: Franz Xaver Messerschmidt (1736-1783) is an 18th-century sculptor who lived and worked at the court of Maria Theresa of Austria. The two works, part of a series called “character heads”, continue to evoke curiosity and questions among the public and art historians, and are the most important works in the Coronini collections.
A Tormented Artist
Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, born in Bavaria in 1736 to a family of modest artisans, was one of the most fascinating sculptors of the Enlightenment. An artist with academic training, he gained considerable acclaim in Vienna for some original portraits created for Empress Maria Theresa and her court. After a study trip to Rome, he was among the first sculptors to break away from the sumptuous works of the Baroque tradition in favor of the more composed rhythms of Neoclassicism.
At the height of his success, around 1770, Messerschmidt’s life was shaken by a profound personal crisis, possibly due to mental health issues, which led him to leave Vienna and move to Pressburg, now Bratislava. Here, while continuing to occasionally create commissioned portraits, he primarily dedicated himself to what are his most famous works, the “character heads”. According to contemporary witnesses, these portraits, characterized by expressions ranging from a firm classical impassivity to the most exaggerated and grotesque grimaces, served for Messerschmidt as a means to keep at bay and exorcise the demons he felt were haunting him.
A Sideshow Phenomenon
After Messerschmidt’s death at the age of only forty-six in 1783, the “character heads”, some made by casting in a tin-lead alloy and others in alabaster, were inherited by his brother Johann Adam. Some were sold individually, but a group of 49 heads was sold in bulk to a single buyer, and for over a century these works were exhibited multiple times for the entertainment of the public as a sideshow phenomenon.
The Rediscovery
In 1889, the collection was dismantled and the 49 heads were sold at auction separately. About ten were purchased by urban planner Camillo Sitte as teaching material for the Staatsgewerbeschule (State School of Applied Arts) of which he was director, while two others entered the collection of Emil Zuckerkandl and his wife Berta, whose salon was later frequented by some key figures of the Vienna Secession, such as painter Gustav Klimt and architect Josef Hoffmann. It was during these years that the artistic and critical reevaluation of Messerschmidt’s work began. On one hand, avant-garde movements, from the Secession to Expressionism, recognized its modernity and profound innovative charge; on the other hand, new theories of psychoanalysis sought to shed light on the creative processes of the sculptor.
Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, The Man Who Looks at the Sun, 1771-1783 
Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, The Sneeze, 1771-1783
A completely new approach to the work of Messerschmidt was indeed offered in 1932 by the studies of Ernst Kris, an art historian and also a follower of Freud’s theories on psychoanalysis, who, analyzing not only the artistic production but also the biographical events, concluded that the sculptor suffered from schizophrenia and that the “character heads” are a product and a consequence of his illness. The interest in Messerschmidt has gradually increased, especially in German-speaking countries, to the point of becoming, in the last decade, a true international phenomenon, so much so that his works are now sought after by museums around the world.
The meaning of the “character heads”
Nicolai’s account, published in 1785, mainly underpins Ernst Kris’s theory which sees the “character heads” as the product of Messerschmidt’s mental illness, that is, the means by which the artist sought to fight his demons. Although this interpretation is still generally accepted today, it is also true that these works cannot be fully understood without considering the cultural context in which they were conceived. In an era marked by intense debate around new concepts of beauty and the sublime, the “character heads” can be associated with the great irrational wave of late Enlightenment, which touched artists such as Fuseli, Blake, and Goya, whose work appears marked, like that of Messerschmidt, by the need to represent the darker side of the human soul.
Recent history
The two “character heads”, unique in Italy, were originally placed by Count Wilhelm Coronini inside his Palace, in the Library room, on either side of the door leading to the Atrium. After lending them between 2011 and 2012 to the Neie Galerie in New York and the Louvre Museum in Paris, as part of the most important monographic exhibition ever dedicated to Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, the Coronini Foundation decided to design a new arrangement for these precious works, suitable for allowing better enjoyment and ensuring greater security. In November 2016, the new exhibition was officially inaugurated in one of the ground floor rooms of the Palace, a permanent exhibition of great suggestion that allows one to fully appreciate their great emotional power.
