Curated playlist
1825 deaths
- Barbara KrafftBarbara Krafft painted one of the most recognized faces in all of classical music, yet she had never met the man whose image she created. Born Maria Barbara Krafft on the 1st of April 1764, she built a career across Central Europe at a…
- Ferdinand I of the Two SiciliesFerdinand I of the Two Sicilies was born in Naples on the 12th of January 1751, a third son with no obvious future as a king. Yet by the time he died on the 4th of January 1825, he had worn more crowns than almost any ruler of his age,…
- Abraham ReesAbraham Rees spent the last eighteen years of his life finishing a project that had consumed decades of his energy: a cyclopaedia in forty-five volumes that would document the arts, sciences, and literature of the age. When John Evans…
- Alexander I of RussiaAlexander I of Russia was born at 10:45 on the 23rd of December 1777 in Saint Petersburg, held at the baptismal font by Catherine the Great herself and counted Frederick the Great and Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor among his godfathers. He…
- Jacques-Louis DavidJacques-Louis David was born in Paris on the 30th of August 1748, into a world of powdered wigs, gilded ceilings, and a painting style built on prettiness. He would spend his life tearing all of it down. By the time he died on the 29th of…
- Pauline BonapartePauline Bonaparte was born on the 20th of October 1780 in Ajaccio, Corsica, into a family that was, at that moment, still firmly on the margins of history. Her father, Carlo Buonaparte, served as Corsica's representative to the court of…
- Eli WhitneyEli Whitney Jr. died on the 8th of January 1825, in New Haven, Connecticut, just one month after his fifty-ninth birthday. He had spent his final illness reportedly inventing mechanical devices to ease his own pain. That restless ingenuity…
- Henry FuseliHenry Fuseli was born on the 7th of February 1741 in Zürich, the second of eighteen children, and he died on the 17th of April 1825 at the house of the Countess of Guildford on Putney Hill. In between those two dates, he painted more than…
- Antonio SalieriAntonio Salieri died in Vienna on the 7th of May 1825, and at his memorial service six weeks later, the music played was his own Requiem in C minor, a piece he had composed two decades earlier but never heard performed. He was 74, had…
- Vladimir BorovikovskyVladimir Borovikovsky arrived in Saint Petersburg in the autumn of 1788 carrying a name that still sounded of the Ukrainian steppe. He had come at the personal request of Empress Catherine the Great, who had seen two allegorical paintings…