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Amalie Bensinger (28 March 1809 – 16 November 1889) was a German painter associated with theNazarene movement.
She was born inBruchsal to an old merchant family fromMannheim that was originally Jewish and had been converted. Her father, a court attorney, was a Catholic, but she was raised in her mother's evangelical Protestant faith. In 1835, she began her studies at the Malschule for women (part of theKunstakademie Düsseldorf) withJulius Hübner andKarl Ferdinand Sohn.[1] After further studies in Mannheim andKarlsruhe, she went to Italy in 1851; first visiting Florence, then Rome.
There, she befriendedJoseph Victor von Scheffel and served as the model for a minor character in his first work, a novel in verse,Der Trompeter von Säckingen, which was very popular; becoming the basis for an opera byViktor Nessler and, in 1907, a silent movie byFranz Porten. She was also the inspiration for a scene from his novelEkkehard.[1]
She also came into contact with the Nazarenes; notablyPeter von Cornelius andFriedrich Overbeck, who greatly influenced her work. She soon began producing paintings with religious themes and made plans to establish an artistic community for women, similar to the one established by the Nazarenes at theSant’Isidoro a Capo le Case monastery.
In 1857, she returned to Germany, possibly with Scheffel. Three years later, she converted to Catholicism atLichtenthal Abbey.[1] This capped a period when she had studied religious books and Biblical themes to paint an altar at the parish church of Saints Peter and Paul inLahr.
She then came into contact with the church painters Peter Lenz (later known as FatherDesiderius Lenz) and Jakob Wüger (later known as FatherGabriel Wüger), who were in the process of developing their own variation on the Nazarene style that would come to be known as theBeuron Art School.[1]
In 1864, she began a major project; an "art monastery" that was originally intended for Rome but, because of her friendship withKatharina von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, her works were placed in theBeuron Archabbey.[1]
Still devoted to her idea of a monastic community for artists, she moved toReichenau Island and acquired the "Schlößle", a manor house she meant to become a female branch of the Archabbey. A fresco (now lost) was painted on the façade by Wüger, but very little else was accomplished and the dream was never realized.[1] She remained atReichenau, near Mitelzell Abbey, painting religious works, and died there at the age of eighty. Her grave was adorned with a figure ofSaint Pirmin, who had served as Abbot there.
Media related toAmalie Bensinger at Wikimedia Commons
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