Sculptor. Johann Gottfried Schadow received recognition as a Neoclassical German sculptor, who was considered the founder of the modern Berlin school of sculptors. His masterpiece is the huge centerpiece atop the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. The sculpture shows a chariot being pulled by four galloping horses and driven by a standing-winged angel holding a staff. He was 29 years old when he executed this sculpture in 1793. The piece was badly damaged during the Allied bombing of Berlin in World War II, but was duplicated and replaced. At court, he trained first with Flemish sculptor Jean-Pierre-Antoine Tassaert. With funding from his father-in-law, he left Germany to study sculpturing in Italy. In Rome, he studied under the genius sculptor, Antonio Canova. After three years of studying in Rome, he returned to Germany in 1788 with his own style. He became the sculptor to the court and secretary to the Prussian Academy of Arts. In 1788 he succeeded Tassaert as director of the Prussian Royal School of Sculpture in Berlin. Over the next 50 years, he created over 200 pieces in various styles and subjects, which included over 100 busts of German elites, statues of the Royal family, and thirty statues for churches or memorials. He made lithographic portraits of children. He created twelve bronze medals of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who was considered the pioneer of Germany's "scholastic philosophy." One of these medals is on display at the British Museum and in 2009, one was given to the Goethe Institute. Besides the medals, he created a huge bust of Goethe. He married twice and had four children. With two adult sons, he remarried as a widower and had two more children. His three sons, Wilhelm Friedrick, Rudolf, and Felix were successful artists in their own right. Through his only daughter, he was the grandfather of admiral Felix von Bendemann of the German Imperial Navy. With his eyesight failing with age, he stopped creating art and wrote art theory textbooks.