| Wilhelm Johann Karl Zahn | |
| Birth Date: | 21 August 1800 |
| Birth Place: | Rodenberg, Germany |
| Death Date: | 22 August 1871 |
| Death Place: | Berlin, Germany |
| Nationality: | German |
| Occupation: | Painter, Architect, Illustrator, inventor |
| Notable Works: | The Most Beautiful Ornaments and the Most Notable Pictures from Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiæ (1828–30) |
Wilhelm Johann Karl Zahn (21 August 1800 in Rodenberg, Schaumburg – 22 August 1871 in Berlin) was a German architect, painter, art critic and design researcher particularly of Roman interior designs found in the ruins of Pompeii. Wilhelm was born as the fourth of five children of painter Bernhard Zahn, and his wife, Christiane, née Weis according to church records. He attended high schools in Bückeburg and Rinteln where he received a universal education. It was in Rinteln where Zahn studied the classics under a Professor Stein who Zahn remembered with particular affection.[1]
Zahn received lessons in architecture and painting from Andreas Range and Sebastian Weygandt, a portrait painter, in Kassel, Germany. He also studied under German neoclassical architect and garden designer, Heinrich Christoph Jussow. Around 1823/24, while he was in Paris with his brother Georg and Johann Wilhelm Nahl, he attended the studios of Jean-Victor Bertin, a French landscape painter, and Antoine-Jean Gros, a French neoclassical artist known for his historical paintings completed under the patronage of Napoleon Bonaparte.[2] Following Zahn's stay in Paris, beginning in 1824, he spent three years in Italy, particularly in Pompeii, where he made numerous tracings of wall frescoes in the ruins and in the Museo Borbonico (now the National Archaeological Museum, Naples). He superintended excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii; cast the finest bronzes and silver vases for the Museum Borbonico; After Zahn's return from Italy in 1827, he met celebrated poet and naturalist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Together with the Grand Duke of Weimar, Goethe introduced Zahn to then Crown Prince, later King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, the Humboldt brothers, Prince Wittgenstein, Schinkel and the sculptor Rauch, as well as other art lovers who promoted the publication of Zahn's drawings from Pompeii. In 1829, Zahn became professor in the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin. As an architect and interior designer, he decorated many fine houses and villas in the Pompeiian style in England and the United States.
Zahn's portfolio “The most beautiful ornaments and strangest paintings from Pompeii, Herculanum and Stabiae” published by Verlag Reimer between 1828 and 1830 with 100 plates, many of them printed in color using an improved process in color lithography Zahn invented in 1818. He later continued the successful publication with two more volumes of the same size. In addition, he brought out epoch-spanning model works with ornaments. The focus of his research interest was to obtain templates for arts and crafts. However, with increasing scientific research into antiquity and other art epochs, less importance was attached to his publications.