Search Results

(b Chemnitz, 1689; d Copenhagen, Dec 5, 1765).

German painter. He trained (1705–11) in Leipzig under the painter David Hoyer (1670–1720); in this studio he probably came into contact with Jan Kupecký, whose assistants, burdened with work during a visit to Leipzig, had appealed to Hoyer for help. Kupecký’s influence remained discernible in Wahl’s palette and style. After travelling for some years in Germany he settled in Hamburg, where, as well as painting the local nobility, he began his long connection with the Danish royal family. In 1721 he painted an informal portrait (Hillerød, Frederiksborg Slot) of the Danish painter Hendrick Krock (1671–1738) and subsequently executed for the Danish royal family several portraits (1723–4), all of which were despatched from Hamburg. In 1727 Wahl was appointed court painter to Frederick IV (reg 1699–1730). Inspired by Hyacinthe Rigaud’s portraits of Louis XIV of France, Wahl depicted Frederick IV (Schleswig, Schleswig-Holsteinisches Landesmus.) in the grandiose image of a military commander. After the accession to the throne of ...

[MatthäusMatthes]

(b Kiel, c. 1554; d Augsburg, Jan 10, 1632).

German goldsmith. With his extensive surviving oeuvre of around 80 authenticated works, he is one of the most renowned goldsmiths of Augsburg. Embossed and cast-silver and silver-gilt reliefs, plaquettes and ornamental mountings, applied to small pieces of ebony furniture, were a speciality of his workshop (see fig.). He mostly produced devotional and ecclesiastical objects, especially small altarpieces and reliquaries, for predominantly Catholic patrons (he himself was a Protestant). Less numerous are such secular luxury items as ornamental cabinets and jewellery caskets and, still fewer, examples of silver sculpture (e.g. automaton table decorations).

In 1569 Walbaum began a six-year apprenticeship under the goldsmith Hans von Tegelen I (master in 1546) in Lübeck, and from before 1579 he worked as a journeyman for at least five Augsburg goldsmiths, including Isaak Sal (master c. 1580–1612). He sometimes worked illegally, as was the case when he executed work for the Bavarian ducal court, commissioned by the court artist ...

(b Innsbruck, July 15, 1657; d Innsbruck, November 18, 1720).

Austrian painter. After studying with his father, Michael Waldmann I (c. 1605–58), he learnt fresco-painting from Egid and Johann Paul Schor in Innsbruck. He may have travelled to Italy during his journeyman years but from 1684 is recorded as a citizen of Innsbruck. He married a rich brewer’s daughter and was appointed to the city council in 1692. The same year he finished an altarpiece for Brixlegg Pfarrkirche, St Anthony with the Infant Jesus, and SS Erasmus and Maximilian (now Innsbruck, Tirol. Landesmus.). Taking the ideas of Egid Schor as his starting point, Waldmann here moves from an originally sharply delineated approach to freer compositions. This closeness to Late Baroque conventions of form is evident in Waldmann’s altarpiece for the Servitenkloster in Rattenberg, St Nicholas of Tolentino Kissing the Wounds of Christ (1700; Innsbruck, Tirol. Landesmus.).

(b Ravensburg; d 1573).

German cabinetmaker, active in Austria. His first recorded work is the choir-stalls (1562–5) of the Hofkirche, Innsbruck, for which he received 30 florins. From January 1566 he received correspondence from Archduke Ferdinand of Austria (reg 1564–95) regarding work at Schloss Ambras, Tyrol, which had just been completed, relating mainly to furnishing the chapel and room panelling. However, immediately after the Archduke’s death all this woodwork was removed to Günzburg, and nothing more is known about it. His most important commission for the court was the creation of the Fürstenchor, a projecting oratory built of wood above the left choir-stalls of the Hofkirche in Innsbruck. He worked on the two south window axes, while the northern section was completed by the joiner Conrad Gottlieb between 1567 and 1571. This splendid intarsia work is an outstanding example of Renaissance craftsmanship. The doors show the influence of the Italian grotesque style and differ from the rest of the panelling in the way the ornamentation is concentrated on the middle of the intarsia section; in the other intarsia-decorated areas perspective strapwork is used. In ...

( fl 1615; d Edinburgh, Oct 1631).

Scottish architect. A prominent figure in the school of Scottish Renaissance building and design that flourished in the first half of the 17th century, he progressed from mason to become the architect responsible for some of the finest buildings of the period. First recorded working as a stone-carver on the palace block at Edinburgh Castle (1615–17), in April 1617 he was granted the post of Master Mason to the Scottish Crown; subsequent royal works he undertook in this capacity include the north wing of Linlithgow Palace, Lothian (1618–20). Wallace’s talents are more apparent, however, in the private commissions attributed to him on the basis of stylistic evidence. The grand new wing for Pinkie House, Lothian, for example, begun in 1613 for Alexander Seton, 1st Earl of Dunfermline (?1555–1622), is distinguished by tall chimney-stacks, regular windows, string courses, a three-storey bay window projecting from the gable and columned buttresses. It is probable that he was also responsible for the L-shape block of Moray House, Edinburgh (begun ...

( fl 1411–45).

Netherlandish tapestry merchant. At the time when Arras was the most important centre of production of tapestry of the highest quality, he was probably the most prominent tapestry merchant there for nearly three decades. Between 1413 and 1445 he supplied John the Fearless and Philip the Good, successive dukes of Burgundy, with many tapestries for their own use and as dynastic and diplomatic gifts. Particularly prominent among his sales were individual pieces and sets depicting hunting scenes, such as those destined for Robert Stewart, 1st Duke of Albany, in 1415, Jean, Duc de Touraine and his wife, Jacqueline of Bavaria, in 1416, Philip the Good in 1428 and Arnold, Duke of Guelders, in 1435. Comparison with other contemporary sales has suggested such subjects as a specialization or even a monopoly in Walois’s trade. Inevitably (although without further evidence) his name has been associated with the four Devonshire Hunting Tapestries (London, V&A) and two further hunting tapestries (Glasgow, Burrell Col. and Minneapolis, MN, Inst. A.). His success was undoubtedly founded on the legacy of his parents, both of whom were members of highly influential and wealthy Arras families. Huart, his father (...

(b Hamburg, June 13, 1866; d Hamburg, Oct 26, 1929).

German art historian. His research interests ranged widely, including the art of the Renaissance, costume, festivals, medicine, astrology and magic, but his primary contribution to cultural history is the Warburg Institute.

Warburg was born into a wealthy Jewish banking family and was never obliged to seek academic employment. He trained at the University of Bonn with scholars such as Hermann Usener (1834–1905) and Karl Lamprecht (1856–1915), becoming interested in psychology, in a broad evolutionary perspective and in historical periods of transition. He continued his studies in Munich, Florence and Strasbourg, finally completing a dissertation in 1891 on how Botticelli’s Primavera and the Birth of Venus demonstrate the ‘afterlife of the Antique’. At this time Jacob Burckhardt’s interpretation of the Renaissance as a period of emancipation from medieval values and the rise of the modern individual was being challenged by scholars such as Henry Thode, who argued for an important role for Christian influences. Warburg can be seen as siding with Burckhardt in this disagreement; but whereas Burckhardt conceived of history as progress and the Renaissance as a cultural unity within that progressive movement, Warburg interpreted the Renaissance as a period of transition and uncertainty, viewing it as if abstracted from the course of time. For Warburg history was a vital and energetic tradition, communicated through images as well as words, but these documents could best be understood by looking for their non-temporal unity. Such themes were particularly evident in his dissertation and his writings of ...

(fl c. 1460–80).

South Netherlandish painter, active also in Italy. First documented in 1460, when he matriculated in the Antwerp painters’ guild, he subsequently moved to Ghent, entering the painters’ guild on 6 October 1464. In 1467 he painted 40 escutcheons with the papal arms for the cathedral of St Bavo, Ghent, his only documented commission in the Netherlands. He sponsored the entry of Hugo van der Goes to the Ghent guild on 5 May 1467 and of Sanders Bening on 19 January 1469, the last date on which Joos is recorded at Ghent. He is stated, in a document of 1475, to have departed for Rome some time previously, with an advance of money from Hugo van der Goes. It is not known if Joos reached Rome, but it is generally accepted that he worked at Urbino, where early sources mention a Netherlandish painter, Giusto da Guanto (Justus of Ghent), who was responsible for the altarpiece of the ...

(b Breslau [now Wrocław]; fl 1572; d 1603).

Silesian stuccoist and architect, active in Sweden. His earliest work in Sweden was probably the stucco decoration (1572) in the King’s Apartment at Kalmar Castle. This consists of a hunting frieze running round the walls, executed in a somewhat naive manner, and cartouches, strapwork, garlands and caryatid figures on the ceiling of the window embrasures. The decoration survives, though it was coarsely repainted in the 19th century.

Watz was occupied mainly at Uppsala Castle, where from 1573 he worked with the architect Franciscus Parr as a stuccoist. When Parr died, Watz took over as architect until the year of his death. Uppsala Castle was never completed, but both the exterior and the interior were given sumptuous stucco ornament: large-scale figures of angels, niches with shells, strapwork and heraldic devices covered the main façades. The richest stucco, however, must have been inside the chapel, a high room with three aisles, probably with a barrel vault, the walls and vault ornamented with stuccos, standing angels and large-scale reliefs. What survives of the decoration is Mannerist, apparently strongly influenced by patterns corresponding with the engravings (...

( fl c 1514–1521/22)

Netherlandish polychromer. The deaths of two painters named Jan Wavere are recorded in Malines in 1521 and 1522, and three early 16th-century Netherlandish carved wooden altarpieces are signed with the name Jan van Wavere. The altarpiece in the church of Jäder in Sweden bears an inscription on the border of the Virgin’s robe in the carved Nativity scene, stating that the work was made in Mechelen in 1514 by Jannen Van Wavere; the name reappears with the date 1515 on the edge of the robe of a carved bishop in the uppermost of two carved altarpieces dedicated to the life of St Dymphna in the church of St Dymphna, Gheel, Belgium; the signature I. V. Wavere is stamped on to the small columns enclosing the central compartment of an undated carved altarpiece, originally from the church of Our Lady, Gdańsk, and now in the chapel of the Teutonic Knights, Vienna. The style of the carved sections of the three altarpieces varies widely and the painted shutters of the Jäder Altarpiece bear the signature of the Brussels painter ...

(b Little Britain, London, 1611; d Butleigh, Somerset, Oct 30, 1672).

English architect. The son of a gentleman, he was sent to Merchant Taylors’ school in the City of London and while still in his teens he became a pupil of Inigo Jones (whose relative—the daughter of a first cousin, it seems—he subsequently married). Throughout the 1630s he gained wide experience in mechanics, the fine arts and architectural design by assisting with Jones’s most ambitious masques and in his remodelling of St Paul’s Cathedral. In effect, Webb was Jones’s clerk and draughtsman for jobs outside the scope of the Office of Works; his first independent designs, most notably a projected villa-like lodge at Hale, Hants, date from 1638. Webb’s preoccupation during the Civil War was architectural design: numerous annotated drawings of the orders, of house plans, of designs for churches, and of details for windows and doorways constitute a thorough survey of classical architectural vocabulary, even if they do not amount to the full illustrated text of a projected treatise. The reconstruction drawings (probably under Jones’s guidance) that he made during this time of the various types of ancient house give a particularly impressive indication of his study of Renaissance treatises....

(b Florence, 1697; d Florence, ?1765).

Italian medallist. One of the most characteristic exponents of Florentine Baroque medallic art, he was apprenticed to Jacopo Mariani and Giovanni Bottari, then studied sculpture under Giovanni Battista Foggini. In 1720 he became a pupil of Massimiliano Soldani, medallist and die-engraver at the Florentine Mint. Grand Duke Cosimo III de’ Medici appointed Weber as Soldani’s successor (1722), a position he held until late in life. From 1743 to 1749 he made plaquettes, snuff boxes, medals and similar items for the Doccia porcelain manufactory. According to his autobiography (1753) he engraved over 250 coin dies for the mints of Florence and Lucca but, while no coins with his signature have been recorded, most portraits on these 1722–65 coinages are probably by him. In an inventory (1753; Vannel and Toderi) of his medals he records 23 pieces. Others, originating after 1753, can probably be added, such as ...

(b Nuremberg, 1526; d Nuremberg, March 28, 1586).

German painter, engraver and designer. Although he described himself as a painter, he is best known for his designs for gold and silver. In 1571 he produced a design for the Akeley Cup (Nuremberg, Ger. Nmus.), named after and shaped like the bell-flower, which subsequently became a masterpiece for the Nuremberg goldsmiths’ guild. His most influential contribution to goldsmithing was his pattern book 30 Stück zum verzachnen für die Goldschmied verfertigt Geörg Wechter 15 Maller 79 Nürnberg (Nuremberg, 1579; e.g. Berlin, Kupferstichkab.), which offered 30 designs of various types of vessels in forms that came readily within the scope of the competent goldsmith who could not create designs himself. Wechter introduced a new version of low-relief strapwork ornament that contrasted with the popular high-relief strapwork style created in the 1530s at Fontainebleau ( see Strapwork ). His designs are characterized by low-relief strapwork composed of interlacing C- and S-curves covering the whole surface of the vessel. His followers Bernhard Zan, Jonas Silber and Paul Flindt II used and developed flat, chased strapwork in their work....

[Master of the Crossed Staffs; Pilgrim, Johann Ulrich; Vuechtelin, Johannes]

(b Strasbourg, c. 1480–85; d after 1526).

German woodcut designer. Documentary evidence about him is sparse. Both his father and grandfather were citizens of Strasbourg. He was recorded in 1505 in Nancy, and in 1506–7 in Wittenberg, where he must have met Lucas Cranach the elder. He was registered as a citizen of Strasbourg on 16 November 1514, being still active there in 1526. A few drawings were formerly attributed to Wechtlin, but these attributions are often contested. Wechtlin’s emblem, two crossed pilgrim’s staffs, was identified in 1777 by von Murr. Bartsch (1808) considered Wechtlin as the inventor of chiaroscuro print, but this is no longer accepted. Whether Wechtlin cut his own prints is unknown.

The dating of Wechtlin’s woodcuts is very hypothetical. Like his Strasbourg contemporary Hans Baldung, he was clearly familiar with the Burgkmair–de Negker chiaroscuro technique. Of the prints generally accepted as Wechtlin’s, the majority are religious in theme. Strauss (1973...

[Claus ]

(b 1450/55; d after 1526).

German sculptor. His name appears several times in the roll book of burghers of Ulm between 1481 and 1526. In 1490 he was commissioned to produce a high altarpiece for St Martin’s church, Biberach, similar in construction and appearance to those at Sterzingen and Blaubeuren. This, his major work, was destroyed during the iconoclasm of 1531. Its eight painted Passion scenes were once thought to be by Martin Schongauer.

The Ulmer Museum, Ulm, has three relief panels by Weckmann: St Catherine of Alexandria (c. 1510) may have formerly belonged to the cloister of Heggbach, while two other high reliefs, a Nativity and an Adoration of the Magi, were once wing panels of the high altar (c. 1515) at Attenhofen parish church, where the predella showing the Twelve Apostles and additional paintings can still be seen. The altars at Biberach and Attenhofen were carved in limewood and originally polychromed. The two Nativity scenes have retained some of their former colour, while the ...

(b Brussels, c. 1510; d Cologne, c. 1590).

Flemish painter, draughtsman and engraver . He studied in Antwerp with Christiaen van de Queborn (c. 1515–78) and painted landscapes in the manner of Frans Mostaert. De Weerdt went to Italy c. 1560, probably visiting Rome and Venice. After his return to the Netherlands he moved to Brussels where he soon became a successful painter. His style reflected the influence of such Italian artists as Parmigianino, whose work he had studied during his stay in Italy. Bénézit referred to a series of paintings showing the Life of the Virgin. Thieme–Becker mentioned only two paintings attributable to the artist (a Madonna, Kassel, Schloss Wilhelmshöhe, and a grisaille representing the Life of the Virgin, Warsaw, N. Mus.) and a few drawings: a Landscape (Amsterdam, Rijksmus.) and four sheets with scenes from the Story of Ruth (Vienna, Albertina). In 1566, de Weerdt moved to Cologne, where he probably met the sculptor Willem Danielsz. van Tetrode, as de Weerdt published a print of a now lost sculpture group by van Tetrode (...

(sculptor)

(b Freiburg im Breisgau, c. 1500; d Augsburg, 1559).

German medallist, sculptor, and goldsmith, son of Hanz Weiditz (sculptor). From 1523 to 1525 he worked in Strasbourg, from 1525 to 1526 in Swabia (Ulm, Öttingen), and from 1526 to 1529 in Augsburg. In 1529 he travelled to Spain in the retinue of Emperor Charles V, then to the Imperial Diet in Augsburg. In 1530–1 he accompanied the Imperial court to the Rhineland and Low Countries. In 1532 he returned through Nuremberg and Regensburg to Augsburg, where he stayed for a time. After an initial refusal he was admitted to the sculptors’ guild, although his work as a goldsmith provoked guild protests. He probably journeyed to Saxony in 1537 and 1539, and, if the English costumes in his Trachtenbuch (Nuremberg, Ger. Nmus., MS. Hs. Nr. 22474) are his work, he may also have spent some time in England.

More than a hundred commemorative medals and models dated between 1523 and 1544 are authenticated works of Christof and others are attributed. In addition to modelling many German burghers and princes, in 1529 he modelled ...

(painter)

(b ?Strasbourg, ?c. 1517; d ?Strasbourg, before 1572).

German painter and woodcut designer, son of Hans Weiditz (woodcut designer). He took over a printing business with David Kannel in 1537, which he sold in 1539. In 1562 a demand was made for a work produced for Paulus Hector Mair, a councillor of Augsburg, for which Christof Weiditz had received advance payments. In 1565 Christof bought two houses. Authenticated works are his designs for woodcuts (two of which are signed) of 92 knights for Mair’s treatise Bericht und anzeigen aller Herren Geschlecht der lobl. Stadt Augspurg, whose first edition was printed by Weiditz and Kannel in Strasbourg in 1538. A second, expanded edition was printed by M. Kriegstein in Augsburg in 1550.

See also Weiditz family

(sculptor)

(b ?Strasbourg, ?c. 1475; d Strasbourg, ?1516).

German sculptor. He was probably trained in his father’s workshop but he worked as a master in Freiburg im Breisgau between 1497 and 1514. Until 1508 he is described as a Bildhower (sculptor) in the lists of the painters’ guild. The parish account books for 1510 record a payment for carved wooden rosettes for keystones in the chancel of Freiburg Cathedral (originals now Freiburg im Breisgau, Augustinmus.). Between 1512 and 1516 he probably worked on the carved sections (vinescroll decoration and predella) of both the high altarpiece and the Schnewlin altarpiece (c. 1514–15) in the cathedral, in collaboration with the painter Hans Baldung. After 1515 he probably returned to Strasbourg.

In addition to commissions for altarpieces in the cathedral and monasteries of Freiburg (executed in an accomplished, delicate Late Gothic style), Hans produced small sculpture groups for private patrons, such as the signed boxwood Adam and Eve (Basle, Hist. Mus.). His altar of the ...

(b ?Freiburg im Breisgau, before 1500; d Strasbourg, c. 1536).

German woodcut designer, probably the son of Hans Weiditz (sculptor). Between 1530 and 1534 he is documented as a member of the Strasbourg guild ‘zur Stelze’, which included metalworkers, glaziers, painters, and printers. The only works that can be certainly attributed to him are the woodcuts to the Herbarum vivae eicones (pubd Schott, Strasbourg, 1530–36; Ger. edn as Contrafaytes Kräuterbuch, 1532) by Otto Brunfels (1488–1534). Some preparatory watercolour drawings for these woodcuts, surviving in the Platter-Herbarium (Berne, Botan. Inst. & Gtn), are astonishing in their precision and fidelity to nature, including such details as wilted leaves and damage by insects. Together with the woodcuts they were an important step in the foundation of botany as a scientific discipline.

In Brunfels’s herbal Weiditz is described as ‘very famous’, and later Johann Fischart (1550–90) in Accuratae effigies pontificum maximorum (Strasbourg, 1573) named him among Strasbourg artists, along with Heinrich Vogtherr and Hans Baldung. The discrepancy between Weiditz’s fame and the paucity of his extant works led Röttinger (1904) to assign to him the work of the illustrator of a German edition of ...