(b Berlin, 25 July 1725; d Berlin, 24 June 1797). German painter, draughtsman and etcher. He was the son of the goldsmith Christian Bernhard Rode (d 1755) and the pupil of N. M?ller ( fl 1740s) and Antoine Pesne. From 1750 to 1752 he studied with Carle Vanloo and Jean Restout in Paris, and between 1754 and 1756 he studied in Rome and in Venice, where he produced oil sketches after Titian, Tintoretto, Pordenone and Giordano. He was a fast and prolific worker with a talent for strong composition and use of colour. This last quality became especially evident after 1770, when he began to execute his works in bright, strong-toned colours. He painted several monumental wall and ceiling paintings, mainly in the castles and palaces of the aristocracy in the area of Berlin and Potsdam. In 1771-3 he produced a series of paintings (e.g. the Ploughman Cincinnatus Chosen to be Dictator) for the house of Ewald Friedrich, Graf von Hertzberg (1725-95), in Britz. From 1776 to 1782 he executed mythological scenes (e.g. Return of Ulysses) for the country house of Graf Friedrich von Hahn (1742-1805) in Neuhaus in East Holstein. One of his many commissions in Berlin was the decoration of the Niederl?ndisches Palais with scenes of the seasons (e.g. Winter: Children Bringing in Wood, c. 1795). He also produced about two dozen altarpieces for churches in Berlin and other German cities, such as Rostock (Last Supper, 1782; Jakobikirche) and Frankfurt an der Oder (Entombment, 1783; Nikolaikirche). In order to educate people in the ideas of the Enlightenment, he made drawings, paintings and etchings on themes from ancient and more recent history, and these constitute his most significant work. Most of his paintings dealing with the history of Brandenburg and Prussia (e.g. Frederick the Great as Perseus, 1785) have disappeared. Some of the other didactic compositions (e.g. the Monk Schwarz Inventing Gunpowder) were used as illustrations for Johann Matthias Schr?ckh's Allgemeine Weltgeschichte f?r Kinder, 3 vols (Leipzig, 1781). Themes and motifs from the paintings and drawings were expanded or varied in his etchings, of which there are over 300, some in large format. Rode also painted many portraits (e.g. Anne Sophie Rode, before 1750; Berlin, M?rk. Mus.) and self-portraits (e.g. Self-portrait, 1786; Halberstadt, Gleimhaus), as well as genre scenes, views of towns and landscapes (e.g. Falls of Kochel near Schreibershau, 1794; Berlin, Alte N.G.). He produced a large number of designs for sculptural decorations for the Brandenburger Tor (e.g. Triumph of the Goddess of Peace, c. 1790; Berlin, Kupferstichkab.), the Spandauer Br?cke, the Deutsche Kirche and the Franz?sische Kirche in Berlin, and for the tombs of the Prussian army officer Joachim Matthias von Zieten (Berlin, Dorotheen Kirche) and others. He was a member of the Akademie der K?nste from 1756, its Director in 1783, and he exhibited there between 1786 and 1797. His brother Johann Heinrich Rode (1727-59) was also an etcher, and another brother, Philipp Rode ( fl 1786-94), was a potter.

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