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Klieber, Josef
(b Innsbruck, 1 Nov 1773; d Vienna, 11 Jan 1850). Austrian sculptor and painter. He first trained with his father, Urban Klieber (c. 1740–1803), a sculptor to the court. In 1792 he went to Vienna where he attended the Akademie and worked in the studios of established sculptors, most notably that of Johann Martin Fischer. By 1810 Klieber had established himself as an independent sculptor, and he soon became a renowned specialist in architectural sculpture. He continued with such work even after being appointed director of the School of Engravers at the Akademie in 1814. He frequently worked for Johann I, Prince of Liechtenstein, designing sculpture for his castles and garden buildings, mainly in Moravia (now in the Czech Republic). This work brought further commissions from the Austrian, Bohemian and Hungarian aristocracy, for example the complete decoration of the Esterházy church and family memorial in Nagyganna, Hungary (c. 1825). In Vienna he decorated many houses designed by the architect Joseph Kornhäusel. Klieber planned grisaille decorations for the Polytechnisches Institut (now Technische Universität) in Vienna; they were completed in 1818. In 1823–4 he carved the cycle Apollo and the Muses for the residence of Archduke Karl (now the Albertina). Among Klieber’s other important works are a monument to Emperor Franz I (1831; Klausenburg, now Cluj, Romania), the statue of Franz I (1842) in the Polytechnisches Institut in Vienna and grisaille frescoes in the library of the abbey at Martinsberg (1829; now Pannonhalma, Hungary) and in the Franzensburg (1830–32) at Laxenburg, Austria. He also planned to carve an enormous portrait of the Emperor Franz I in the rocks of the Schneeberg in Lower Austria, but this project was never carried out. Stylistically Klieber combined Baroque tradition with Neo-classical elements, developing a soft and tranquil, Romantic language of form that appealed to the quiet, yet noble tenor of the Vormärz era.
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