(b Kuckädel, nr Crossen/Oder, Feb 17, 1699; d Berlin, Sept 16, 1753).
German architect, interior decorator, painter and draughtsman. After growing up under the guardianship of his uncle, he joined the army at 15 but left the service in 1729 as a result of poor health to devote himself entirely to painting. His friend Antoine Pesne, the leading painter in Prussia at the time, was his most important teacher. A member of the entourage of the Crown Prince (the future Frederick II; see Hohenzollern, House of family §(7)) from 1732, Knobelsdorff travelled the same year to Dresden. The only authentic portrait of him, painted by the Saxon court painter Adám Mányoki, dates from this time. In 1734 he produced his first modest architectural work, the Temple of Apollo in the Amalthea Garden at Neuruppin, then the residence of the Crown Prince.
From 1736, as ‘Chevalier Bernin’, he was a respected member of the Crown Prince’s court at Schloss Rheinsberg. He seems at first to have been valued primarily as a painter. On a journey to Italy, begun in ...
