JUEL, Jens Jørgensen

Danish painter. Noted for his landscapes and portraits, he painted compositionally balanced works in a harmonious palette, continuing a classicalGLOSSARYRelating to the culture of ancient Greece and Rome (classical Antiquity). The classical world played a profoundly important role in the Renaissance, with Italian scholars, writers, and artists seeing their own period as the rebirth (the "renaissance") of classical values after the Middle Ages. The classical world was considered the golden age for the arts, literature, philosophy, and politics. Concepts of the classical, however, changed greatly from one period to the next. Roman literature provided the starting point in the 14th century, scholars patiently finding, editing and translating a wide range of texts. In the 15th century Greek literature, philosophy and art - together with the close study of the remains of Roman buildings and sculptures-expanded the concept of the classical and ensured it remained a vital source of ideas and inspiration. painterly tradition. The son of a vicar at Gamborg on Funen, Juel went to Hamburg (then under Danish sovereignty), where he studied under the German artist Johann Michael Gehrmann (d 1770). In 1765 he briefly returned to Fünen and then to Copenhagen, where he studied at the Kunstakademi until 1771. While at the academy he came under the influence of Carl Gustaf Pilo, a professor there from 1748 and best known for his portraits of the Danish royal family. It was also at the academy that Juel perfected his considerable talent in drawing. Caspar David Friedrich and Philipp Otto Runge were Juel's students.