Gustav Friedrich Waagen

His opinions were greatly respected in England, where he was invited to give evidence before the royal commission inquiring into the condition and future of the National Gallery,[1] for which he was a leading candidate to become director.

Having passed through the college of Hirschberg, Silesia (modern Jelenia Góra), he volunteered for service in the Napoleonic campaign of 1813–14, and on his return attended the lectures at Breslau University.

Although Waagen has been criticised for his "amateurish and erratic expertise" by modern standards, his work was regarded as highly authoritative for the following half-century.

[4] In 1844, he was appointed professor of art history at Berlin University, and in 1861 he was called to St Petersburg as adviser in the arranging and naming of the pictures in the imperial collection.

Among his other publications are some essays on Rubens, Mantegna and Signorelli; Kunstwerke und Künstler in Deutschland; and Die vornehmsten Kunstdenkmäler in Wien.