Asmus Jacob Carstens

Much of what survives is in the form of drawings, many using "a schematic, pale colouring as a timid and humble accessory to the dominating figure-drawing", that were planned for large fresco commissions that never materialized.

After quitting his master in 1776, he went to Copenhagen, where he studied at the academy and supported himself for seven years by drawing portraits in red chalk, producing during the time a large historical picture, the "Death of Æschylus", and another painting, "Æolus and Ulysses".

He was then introduced by the poet Overbeck to a wealthy patron, by whose aid he went to Berlin, where his "Fall of the Angels", a colossal picture containing over 200 figures, gained him a professorship in the academy of fine arts.

At the end of this time he made a strongly worded attack on the Prussian academy and was dismissed; he was based in Rome for the brief remainder of his life, where he developed his final style.

A biography was published in 1806 by his friend, the critic and archaeologist Karl Ludwig Fernow, who was later the royal librarian at Weimar, which has the best collection of his graphic work.