Friedrich Rehberg

[1] Rehberg was born into a middle-class protestant family in Hanover in 1758, the son of a secretary for the estates of Calenberg (one of the duchies of Hannover).

[2] Friedrich, himself, studied first with Oeser in Leipzig, then with Giovanni Battista Casanova and Johann Eleazar Zeissig, in Dresden.

[1][3] In 1783 he returned to Hanover, where his reputation was now well-established, and received many commissions to paint portraits, including those of the Duke Wilhelm and the Bishop of Osnabrück.

There he painted "Belisarius",[4] "Oedipus and Antigone", "The Death of Abel", "Bacchus", "Orpheus and Eurydice" and "Jupiter and Venus".

[1][3] In 1791 he went to Naples and made a series of drawings of Lady Hamilton posing as classical statuary, which were published in book form in 1794.