Franz Xaver Messerschmidt and His Bizarre Character Heads

Zuzanna Stanska | Daily Art | 14th April 2026

For someone relatively unknown the Viennese late baroque artist Franz Messerschmidt gets lots of exhibitions. The reason it seems is his perplexing series of 60 or so “character head” sculptures. Done in late career, they are highly detailed male faces showing various extreme emotions. Messerschmidt kept them for himself. Were they a reflection of his mental ill-health or just the Enlightenment’s fascination with faces? Says one critic “a lost soul of the European Enlightenment.” A detailed essay is here.