Arrived at Rome, Rome for a long time existed to him only in the Vatican. His first object was to imbue himself thoroughly with tho spirit of 3liehel Angelo and Raffaelle, to catch if possible their modes of thought, and to trace their conceptions to their source. Highly wrought up as his expectations had been, he found them here surpassed, and that their works were instinct with a mental power of which no copies or engravings had before conveyed to him any idea. The severity of his principles of criticism obtained for him not a few enemies, and they more than insinuated that he could not perform what he exacted from others. He soon convinced them of the contrary by a large drawing representing the visit of the Argonauts to the centaur Chiron, a subject he had before produced at Berlin, but which he now recomposed, and in a style that plainly indicated how much he had already benefited by studying Michel Angelo and Raffaelle.
The two years to which his stay at Rome was limited having expired, he begged hard for a little longer extension of the term, as he was preparing to make a public exhibition of the subjects which be had produced while in Italy. His exhibition was opened in April 1795, and consisted of eleven designs mostly poetical and mythological, and few of them ever before treated. Both in style and subject these works were an earnest of powers as superior as they were uucommon, and the artist's fame was soon spread through Germany by an article on the exhibition in Wieland's '1NIercur: The same year he sent three compositions to Berlin, whereupon he was again urged to return to his post in the academy ; but instead of its being complied with, this demand was followed by remonstrance and refusal on the part of Carstens, and his connection with the Berlin academy soon after ceased altogether. In the course of the two following years be produced many fine compositions, including a series of twenty-four subjects from Pinder, Orpheus, and Apollonius Rhodius, all of them illustrative of the Argonautic expedition. This series it was his intention to etch
himself, but iu the autumn of 1797 he was attacked by a serious malady, which was succeeded by a slow fever and an obstinate cough, whereby he was so enfeebled that he was unable to employ his pencil except for a very short interval in the day. Yet even after he was incapable of quitting his bed his wonted enthusiasm and energy did not forsake him ; and but a few hours before his death be conversed with his friend Fernow respecting a mythological subject which had suggested itself to him. He expired on the 25th of May 1798, when he had just entered his forty-fifth year.
Thus may Carstens be said to have been prematurely cut off just as he had begun his career as an artist. In him Germany lost one who gave promise of taking rank among the greatest masters of the art. His life as yet had been a life of preparation. To art he gave himself undividedly ; his whole soul was in it, so that, although he had not mastered some things that lie more on the surface, he had dived into its depths and recesses. What be chiefly valued was creative power, intelligence, and mind, of which he regarded external forms merely as the expression. Conformably with such opinions and theory was his own practice. His compositions, which he was in the habit of completely shaping out, maturing, and finishing up mentally, before ho committed them to paper, are all marked by a severe simplicity and fine poetic conception ; and had a longer life and health been granted to him, he would doubtless have left behind him works com mensurate in other respects with their intellectual value, and which would have acquired for him the kind of fame he coveted.