Portraits of Frederick the Great

[33][34][35][36][37] The king gave several of these pictures away as gifts in recognition of rendered services,[38] whether as life-size paintings, miniatures set with diamonds that were worn like medals, or representations on snuff boxes.

[53][54] For instance, referring to Pesne’s 1740 portrait of Frederick, art historian Helmut Börsch-Supan writes that the artist “wasn't interested in a true portrayal of the character.

This is a feminine trait that makes it difficult to see the full personality in this portrait.”[55] Indeed, Pesne's idealized representations of Frederick do not correspond with a statement by the Austrian ambassador Friedrich Heinrich Graf von Seckendorff about the 14-year-old crown prince that he looked "old and stiff" at a young age and acted accordingly presumably because of the hardships imposed on him by his father.

[64] However, more recent researchers have doubts as to whether the king actually sat for this painting from 17 to 20 June 1763 at Castle Salzdahlum,[65] especially since he had an aversion to being portrayed and the artist made Frederick's facial features look far too handsome.

[69] When the French painter Charles-Amédée-Philippe van Loo stayed in Berlin from 1763 to 1769, he painted at least two portraits of the Prussian king, one of which has been in the royal collection in London since 1816.

[73] By emphasizing the sharp nasolabial folds, the straight lines of the forehead and the bridge of the nose, the narrow mouth and the protruding eyes the artists created a type of image that art historian Helmut Börsch-Supan has characterized as “very Prussian in its expressive frugality to the point of scantiness.”[74] A very popular depiction of Frederick in the new style is the portrait painted by Johann Heinrich Christian Franke in 1763/64, of which a number of variants exist.

The monarch was well known for frequently saluting in public with his “cocked hat.”[78] In 1767, Anton Friedrich König (1722-1787) was appointed royal court miniature portrait painter for Frederick the Great.

In 1769, he produced a watercolour painting on ivory showing the king as an intellectual writer, historian and philosopher in front of his writing table, surrounded by the books in his library.

[79][80][81] In a gouache of 1772 by Daniel Chodowiecki the king is posed rather awkwardly in a slightly bent position on horseback, a representation that circulated in numerous copies[82][83] and engraved versions.

A print after it was later used by Johann Caspar Lavater as an illustration for his Physiognomische Fragmente (1777), because the author was of the opinion that here "the Great, He himself, was riding past," as he believed he knew him from life.

"You have to be Apollo, Mars or Adonis to be painted, but since I do not have the honour of resembling one of these gentlemen, I have withdrawn my face from the painters' brush as much as it depended on me," he wrote to Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert in 1774.

[106] The death mask of him, taken by John Eckstein on 17 August 1786,[108][109][110] demonstrates precisely what had led the king to his conviction that he was extremely ugly: Frederick had a prominently hooked nose and little else to make him look handsome.

[116] Only one artist seems to have shown the Prussian king as he really was, namely with an extremely clear aquiline nose and playing the flute in front of a symbol of homosexuality: William Hogarth in scene 4 of his satirical series Marriage A-la-Mode.