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Posch, Leonhard
(b Finsing, Tyrol, 7 Nov 1750; d Berlin, 21 June 1831). Austrian sculptor, wax modeller and medallist. He was apprenticed in Salzburg in 1765 to the Court Sculptor Johann Baptist Hagenauer, whom he followed to Vienna in 1774. Weakened by a severe illness, he was obliged to confine himself to the production of small portrait figures, a restriction that served to concentrate his artistic abilities. He modelled his images in wax and then cast them in white plaster. He produced c. 150 works in Vienna, notable among which were two close likenesses of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He also cast coloured portraits of the imperial family in wax, to which real hair was fitted. These works inspired much admiration at the Imperial Court. In 1804 Posch travelled via Hamburg to Berlin; there his wax portraits likewise aroused great excitement and brought him commissions from the royal family. From 1810 Posch worked in Paris at the Imperial Mint; in 1814 he returned to Berlin. There he taught modelling technique at the Königliche Akademie, while at the same time providing models for the Königliche Porzellanmanufaktur, for the royal iron foundries in Berlin and Gleiwitz and for the Königliche Münze. Many of his models were produced both in biscuit porcelain and in cast iron. As well as members of the royal family and Prussian and Saxon nobility (e.g. Queen Louise of Prussia, see Forrer, iv, p. 671), Posch portrayed many artists and scholars, such as Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. His complete oeuvre comprises nearly 800 plaques.
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