A family tree shows the Schwanthaler family of sculptors. Their success story begins in Ried in 1633. 

The leading masters of the Ried workshop were Hans, Thomas, Johann Franz and Johann Peter the Elder. 

His son, Johann Peter the Younger, made his living primarily as a drawing instructor. On his death in 1838, the Schwanthaler’s Ried workshop closed. 

There were other workshops in Gmunden and in the artistic metropolis of Munich. Ludwig Michael Schwanthaler achieved great fame for his sculptures. He was lucky enough to have King Ludwig I as his patron. His best-known works are the Mozart monument in Salzburg and the Bavaria statue in Munich. Ludwig Schwanthaler was the family’s last great sculptor and died in 1848. 

The Schwanthaler family tree includes 21 sculptors. The workshop always passed to the most gifted son, not automatically the eldest son. The women of the family were not permitted to take on the workshop and were only allowed to perform lower-level duties. 

Five of the family’s seven generations lived and worked in Ried. Over a period of 200 years, the Schwanthaler family created notable religious and above all beautiful works of art in wood, stone and bronze. For Ried and for much further afield.