Leopold Kiesling was an Austrian sculptor who lived during the classicist period. He worked as a sculptor for the Viennese court, aristocracy, and wealthy bourgeoisie. Kiesling was born on October 8, 1770, in Schöneben, Upper Austria, and died on November 26, 1827, in Vienna.
Kiesling's father, a glass merchant, moved the family to Vienna when Kiesling was only 10 months old. When he was 14 years old, his father passed away, and he had to learn the carpenter's trade to support his mother and four younger siblings. Kiesling later worked as a journeyman carpenter for Viennese sculptors Joseph Straub and Joseph Schrott while studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under Professor Johann Martin Fischer.
Count Philipp von Cobenzl noticed Kiesling's talent and sent him to Rome in 1801, along with Peter von Nobile and Josef Abel, as a scholarship holder of the Vienna Academy. While in Rome, Kiesling worked in the circle of Johann Christian Reinhart, Antonio Canova, and Joseph Anton Koch, whose sister-in-law Kiesling married in 1809. Canova helped Kiesling obtain the imperial commission for the marble group Mars, Venus, and Cupid, which Emperor Francis I commissioned for his daughter's marriage to Napoleon I. The sculpture was installed in the Upper Belvedere of the palace.
Kiesling was appointed k. und k. court sculptor in Vienna and died at the age of 57.