Johann Wenzel Peter

Johann Wenzel Peter went to Rome in 1774 to become a sculptor, and he stayed there for 55 years as a painter of animals. He was born in 1745 in Karlsbad, the Bohemian spa town, and first trained as an engraver. In Vienna he did fine chased ornament for an arms maker, until Count Kaunitz, an Austrian diplomat, judged him gifted enough for sculpture and helped him on to Rome. One of his first Roman pieces was a terracotta relief with 20 figures, bought by Lord Bristol, an English earl and bishop who collected on his travels.

Animals soon took over. Prince Marcantonio Borghese became his protector, and in the late 1770s Peter painted well over a hundred creatures into the decoration of the Borghese villa, working alongside the painter Christoph Unterberger. Collectors sought out his lions, tigers, horses and hunting dogs for the fur, colour and muscle he studied from life. In 1812 he became a professor at the Accademia di San Luca, Rome's academy of artists, and he died in Rome in December 1829.