German painter, part of a family of artists active in the 18th-19th centuries. Franz Riepenhausen and his brother Johannes (1788-1860) were early amateurs and champions of the Italian Primitives and long-standing German residents of Rome. Beginning in 1807 they entertained the notion of publishing the works of Giotto in engravings. In 1810 they published the first fascicle of a large-scale "Geschichte der Malerei in Italien." A series of engravings after the works of Fra Angelico and Raphael were to follow. //