Christian von Mechel

Christian von Mechel (4 April 1737 in Basel; † 11 April 1817 in Berlin) was a Swiss engraver, publisher and art dealer. He developed a broad trade in art, through business connections throughout northern and central Europe; although the French Revolutionary Wars ruined him financially, he started over in 1805 in Berlin. Although trained in art and copper etching, he found his niche as a purveyor of art. Joseph II employed him to convert the private Habsburg collection to one available for public display. He was one of the first curators to employ schools of art as a mnenomic system of organization. Christian von Mechel came from a long-established family of artisans in Basel. His father John (1813-07) and grandfather Josias both worked as a coopers, and his mother Salome (Bulacher) was the daughter of a guild master; the family name itself dates to the 16th century, and his maternal great grandfather, Christian Munch (1678-1747) had been master of the guilds and a Basel magistrate. Originally destined for a career in the clergy, Christian Mechel attended the Basel Latin School. Early, however, he showed a marked interest in art. In the 1750s, as construction in Basel flourished, it occurred to his parents that art might be a lucrative business and he was permitted to pursue this study. In 1753 he visited Augsburg to learn the engraving discipline from Georg Daniel Heumann. In 1757 he briefly worked in Johann Georg Pintz's workshop in Nuremberg. From 1757 to 1764 he lived in Paris, where he studied with Johann Georg Wille and later launched his own studio, where he produced his own work and sold other objets d'art. In 1761, he married Elisabeth Haas (1740–86), the daughter of a respected type caster Johannes Wilhelm Haas from Nuremberg. In 1795, he married again to Friederike von Wagner, daughter of the banker and financier Ludwig Friedrich von Wagner, of Regensburg, but they divorced the following year. Both marriages were childless. Mechel thrived in Paris, learning how to deal with rich clients and developing a feel for the art market.