Ludwig Thiersch - Vienna, Rome, Saint Petersburg, Bavaria, and London

Vienna, Rome, Saint Petersburg, Bavaria, and London

Through the rest of his life, Thiersch traveled from city to city, being employed alternately to paint church frescoes and to produce oil paintings for private patrons. His church art is particularly notable, and together with Ludwig Seitz and Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin, he is considered to have led a revival in western European ecclesiastical art.

In 1856, Thiersch was appointed to a position in Vienna, where he continued to paint church frescoes. During this period Theophil Freiherr von Hansen, a Danish-Austrian architect who had also spent time in Greece and taken up an interest in Byzantine art, was rebuilding Vienna's Fleischmarkt Greek Church in a neo-Byzantine style, and Thiersch was commissioned along with Karl Rahl to supply frescoes for the interior.

Following the position in Vienna, Thiersch was employed in Rome by Simon Sinas, a Greek philanthropist, for whom he produced a number of works on mythological and religious subjects, including Charon als Seelenführer, Bakchos' Einzug in den Hain von Kolonos, and Thetis' Klage um Achilleus.

In 1860, he went to Saint Petersburg, where he painted frescoes and icons in the chapels of Grand Duke Nicholas and Grand Duke Michael, and in the Protestant Church of Saint Catherine.

After his return to Germany, Thiersch painted Auferweckung der Tochter des Jairus und Christus in Gethsemane (1866) for the Stiftskirche in Kempten, as well as Predigt des Paulus auf dem Areopag, and in the following years a number of other works, including Christus am Teich Bethesda, Ceres, die ihre Tochter sucht, Christus in der Wüste, Alarich in Athen als Sieger gefeiert, and Kreuztragung Christi.

Some years later, Thiersch painted the icons in the iconostasis of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of St. Sophia in London (consecrated 1882).