Adam Elsheimer
Adam Elsheimer (baptized March 18, 1578 in Frankfurt am Main ; † December 11, 1610 in Rome ) was an important German baroque painter of the early 17th century.
Life
Elsheimer was the oldest of ten children of the master tailor Anton Elsheimer, who immigrated to Frankfurt from Wörrstadt in 1577, and of Maria Elsheimer, née Reuss, daughter of a Frankfurt master cooper. The name can be traced back to the Rheinhessen village of Elsheim . The family lived in the house in Fahrgasse no. 120 on the unicorn place .
He completed a five-year training course in his hometown with the painter Philipp Uffenbach , who introduced him to the works of Albrecht Dürer and Matthias Grünewald . He was also influenced by the Dutch landscape painters Lucas van Valckenborch and Gillis van Coninxloo .
In 1598 he left Frankfurt and went to Munich , where he worked in the workshop of Johann Rottenhammer and got to know the works of Venetian painting . After another study visit to Venice , he settled in Rome in 1600, where he stayed until the end of his life. In 1606 he married Carla Antonia Stuart (Italian: Stuarda), a woman from Frankfurt of Scottish origin. Elsheimer constantly lived in financially cramped circumstances. One of his “students” was Hendrick Goudt , who made seven of his paintings known throughout Europe in the form of copperplate engravings . This acquaintance, however, also contributed to Elsheimer's downfall. Goudt was not just a guest, student and patron; allegedly he also took him to the debtor's office , but there is no evidence of this.
When Elsheimer died of the consequences of his imprisonment at the age of only 32, he was in high regard; the Roman painters' guild solemnly carried him to his grave. From Rubens' letter to Dr. Faber:
“… One of the cruelest news, namely the death of our beloved Adam, which hit me most painfully. After such a loss our whole guild should be wrapped in deep mourning ... He died in all his might and his harvest was still in its bud. "
The painter was buried in the Roman church of San Lorenzo in Lucina . His grave monument has not been preserved. In 2010, when the excavations in this church were completed, a marble plaque was placed on the front of the first left pillar, praising him as one of the first to use a telescope to paint the starry sky.
Further students were Paul Juvenell the Elder and Johann König.
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During his apprenticeship in Frankfurt, Elsheimer was likely to appreciate paintings by Albrecht Dürer ( Heller Altar ), Hans Holbein the Elder. Ä. and Matthias Grünewald have been influenced. In Venice he got to know the work of Tintoretto and Veronese and worked for Hans Rottenhammer as his workshop assistant. In Rome, on the other hand, he saw Caravaggio's light and dark painting .
His mostly small pictures are - as with Rottenhammer - mainly painted on copper and in miniature-like fine execution with the help of a magnifying glass. His pen drawings and etchings testify to empathy and artistic independence. He preferred religious and mythological subjects, often associated with landscapes in "romantic" lighting and poetic mood. With this he combined a new realism and thus established a new style in European landscape painting. Elsheimer insofar marked departure from the mannerisms than that he increased the intensity of illumination in its images, a Caravaggio generated eske light-dark modeling of the scene. This was the decisive step towards baroque painting, which did not get lost in the compositional isolation of the parts of the picture, but instead emphasized the essence of the picture through the concentration of light.
Due to his early death and his slow painting style, which was also hampered by depression, he left only a few works. So far 40 paintings and 30 drawings and gouaches are known. The seven panels of the Frankfurt cross altar are one of his main works. It was considered lost for a long time. From 1951 to 1981 the Städelsche Kunstinstitut acquired the individual panels piece by piece. Thanks to a detailed description and drawing from the time it was made, the altar could be reconstructed.
His paintings show an unusual artistic range: in the Baptism of Christ he combined old German landscape painting with a high baroque sense of space; his Procris anticipated the eroticism of Poussin and Rubens; before Elsheimer there was no representation of the sky-wide landscape as in the aurora ; the nocturnal plays such as The Fire of Troy , Ceres , Escape to Egypt were groundbreaking, and the "little" Tobias and the intimate interior of Philemon and Baucis served Rembrandt 50 years later as a template and inspiration. His work influenced (also through Goudt's engravings) Claude Lorrain in Italy, Rubens and Rembrandt in the Netherlands, and Caspar David Friedrich . His great influence can also be seen in the large number of copies made of his paintings.
"For decades, literature has endeavored to divide the pictures between Elsheimer, his employees, his successors, his copyists ... although some write-ups and write-downs are still unsecured."
Elsheimer was the first painter to paint the escape of Mary and Joseph with the Christ child to Egypt as a night picture with several light sources.
Elsheimer as an astronomer
Adam Elsheimer was the first painter to depict the starry sky almost true to life. Although the constellations are by no means reproduced with the accuracy of a celestial atlas , Elsheimer was the first artist to paint the Milky Way as a collection of innumerable individual stars (a revolutionary idea at the time). In addition, he turned the moon “upside down” in one of his pictures (an indication of an instrument) and recorded details that are invisible to the naked eye. It is very likely that in the summer of 1609 he observed the sky over Rome with a telescope or a concave mirror . His observations were reflected in the picture The Flight into Egypt .
Works: paintings
The data for the individual paintings follow the information in.
| image | title | year | Size, material | collection |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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The witch | around 1596/98 | 13.5 × 9.8 cm, copper | Royal Collection |
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St. Elisabeth looks after the sick | around 1597 | 27.6 × 20 cm, copper | Wellcome Library, (Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London) |
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House altar with six scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary | around 1598 | 26 × 21, 12 × 10 (l + r), 10 × 21 (bottom) cm, copper | Gemäldegalerie , Berlin |
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The conversion of Paul | around 1598 | 19.7 × 25.1 cm, copper | Städel , Frankfurt |
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Jacob's dream | around 1598 | 19.5 × 26.1 cm, copper | Städel, Frankfurt |
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The mystical marriage of St. Catherine | around 1598/1599 | 34 × 26.5 cm, copper | Alte Pinakothek, Munich |
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The Holy Family with little John | around 1599 | 37.5 × 24.3 cm, copper | Gemäldegalerie, Berlin |
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The baptism of Christ | around 1599 | 28.1 × 21 cm, copper | National Gallery , London |
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Paul in Malta | around 1598/99 | 17 × 21.3 cm, copper | National Gallery, London |
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The fire of Troy | around 1600/02 | 36 × 50 cm, copper | Alte Pinakothek , Munich |
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The flood | soon after 1600 | 26.5 × 34.8 cm, copper | Städel, Frankfurt |
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Saint Christopher | soon after 1600 | 22.5 × 17.5 cm, copper | Hermitage , Saint Petersburg |
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Judith kills Holofernes | around 1601/03 | 23.2 × 17.8 cm, copper | The Wellington Museum, Apsley House , London |
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The three Marys at the tomb of Christ | around 1602/03 | 25.8 × 20 cm, copper | Rheinisches Landesmuseum , Bonn |
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Pietà | around 1603 | 21 × 16 cm, copper | Duke Anton Ulrich Museum , Braunschweig |
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Saint Jerome in the wild | around 1603? (1598-1610) | 17.1 × 22.2 cm, copper | Pinacoteca dell'Accademia Carrara , Bergamo, Italy |
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Saint Jerome in the wild | around 1603 | 13.3 × 16.2 cm, copper | Privately owned |
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Saint Laurence before his martyrdom | around 1603 | 26.7 × 20.6 cm, copper | National Gallery, London |
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The stoning of Saint Stephen | around 1603/04 | 34.7 × 28.6 cm, copper, silver-plated | Scottish National Gallery , Edinburgh |
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The discovery and glorification of the True Cross , the Frankfurt cross altar | around 1603-05 | seven plates, copper, silver-plated | Städel, Frankfurt |
 
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Saints and figures from the Old and New Testament | around 1605 | Series of nine panels, each approx. 9 × 7 cm, copper, silver-plated | Eight panels in Petworth House , Petworth ; a plaque with Saint Lawrence in the Musée Fabre , Montpellier |
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The Flight into Egypt | around 1605 | 9.8 × 7.6 cm (oval), copper, silver-plated | Kimbell Art Museum , Fort Worth |
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Il Contento | around 1606 | 30.1 × 42 cm, copper | Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh |
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The Mockery of Ceres | around 1606 | 29.1 × 24 cm, copper, silver-plated | Bader Collection , Milwaukee |
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Aurora | around 1606 | 17 × 22.5 cm, copper | Duke Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig |
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Tobias and the Angel ("Little Tobias") | around 1606 | 12.4 × 19 cm, copper | Historical Museum , Frankfurt |
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Self-portrait | around 1606/08 | 63.7 × 48 cm, canvas | Uffizi Gallery , Florence |
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Apollo and Coronis | around 1606/07 | 17.4 × 21.6 cm, copper | Walker Art Gallery , Liverpool |
 
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The three kingdoms of the world | around 1607/08 | two panels ( The Empire of Venus and The Empire of Minerva ) from an originally three-part series, each 8.7 × 14.6 cm, copper | Fitzwilliam Museum , Cambridge |
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Latona and the peasants from Lycia | around 1607/08 | 16.9 × 22.7 cm, copper | Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud , Cologne |
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Jupiter and Mercury with Philemon and Baucis | around 1607/08 | 16.9 × 22.4 cm, copper | Old Masters Picture Gallery , Dresden |
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The Flight into Egypt | 1609 | 31 × 41 cm, copper | Alte Pinakothek, Munich |
literature
- Keith Andrews : Adam Elsheimer. Catalog raisonné of paintings, drawings and etchings. Schirmer / Mosel, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-88814-142-7 ; extended new edition 2006, ISBN 3-8296-0244-8 .
- Franziska Bachner: Identity and contrast. On the formation of figures with Adam Elsheimer. In: Städel yearbook. Neue Episode, Volume 16, 1997, pp. 249-256.
- Franziska Bachner: Figure and Story in the Art of Adam Elsheimer. Würzburg 2006 (dissertation, University of Würzburg, 1995).
- Reinhold Baumstark (ed.): From new stars. Adam Elsheimer's "Flight into Egypt". On the occasion of the exhibition From New Stars. Adam Elsheimer's Flight into Egypt, Alte Pinakothek, Munich, December 17, 2005 to February 26, 2006. Catalog by Marcus Dekiert . DuMont, Cologne 2005, ISBN 3-8321-7583-0 .
- Ernst Holzinger : Elsheimer, Adam. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, ISBN 3-428-00185-0 , p. 465 f. ( Digitized version ).
- Rüdiger Klessmann : Elsheimer's “Mockery of Ceres” - on the question of the original. In: Städel yearbook. New Series, Volume 16, 1997, pp. 239-248.
- Rüdiger Klessmann: Adam Elsheimer. Comments on the reception of his art in the north. In: Volker Manuth, Axel Rüger (eds.): Collected Opinions , London 2004, pp. 54–71.
- Rüdiger Klessmann among others: Discovering the world in detail, Adam Elsheimer 1578–1610. Exhibition catalog of the Städel Museum , Frankfurt am Main. Edition Minerva, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-938832-06-1 .
- Wolfgang Klötzer (Hrsg.): Frankfurter Biographie . Personal history lexicon . First volume. A – L (= publications of the Frankfurt Historical Commission . Volume XIX , no. 1 ). Waldemar Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-7829-0444-3 , p. 184-185 .
- Christian Lenz : Adam Elsheimer. The paintings in the Städel. Exhibition in 1977 at the Städelsche Kunstinstitut. Städel, Frankfurt am Main 1977.
- Gottfried Sello : Adam Elsheimer. Beck, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-406-32026-0 .
- Andreas Thielemann, Stefan Gronert (eds.): Adam Elsheimer in Rome: work - context - effect. Hirmer, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-7774-4255-6 .
- Alfred Woltmann : Elsheimer, Adam . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1877, p. 66.
- Hans Möhle : The drawings of Adam Elsheimer. German publishing house for art history, Berlin 1966.
- Joachim Jacoby : The drawings by Adam Elsheimer. Critical catalog. Städel Museum (Ed.), Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-935647-40-3 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Adam Elsheimer in the catalog of the German National Library
- Adam Elsheimer Society eV
- Adam Elsheimer at Google Arts & Culture
- Elsheimer, Adam. Hessian biography. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
More picture galleries
- Works by Adam Elsheimer at Zeno.org .
- Adam Elsheimer at artcyclopedia.com (engl.)
- Adam Elsheimer @ akg-images.de
Remarks
- ↑ Discovering the world in detail , exhibition at the Städel from March 17 to June 5, 2006
- ↑ S. Partsch: Look me in the eye, Dürer! The art of the old masters. Munich 2018. p. 182.
- ↑ Galileo was obviously not the first ... on the website of the Deutsches Museum; Horst Bredekamp: The unevenness of the moon and the dirt of the sun. Research campaigns from 1610-12. (pdf) Meeting reports of the Leibniz Society 2008; Gerhard Hartl: The universe of Adam Elsheimer. In: Astronomy Today. March 2007, pp. 16-23
- ↑ Michael Maek-Gérard (Ed.): Discovering the world in detail - Adam Elsheimer 1578–1610 ; Ed. Minerva, Wolfratshausen 2006; ISBN 3-938832-06-1 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Elsheimer, Adam |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | baptized March 18, 1578 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Frankfurt am Main |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 11, 1610 |
| Place of death | Rome |