Benedict Gambs
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Benedikt Gambs (* around 1703 in Gestratz near Lindau; † November 15, 1751 in Ebnet ) was an artist from the Western Allgäu and one of the most important Baroque painters in Breisgau .
Life
Gambs was a son of Benedikt Gambs the Elder. Ä. (* March 17, 1681), who was also a painter. His life and work are comprehensively presented in Bettina May-Schillok's master's thesis, on which the further explanations are based. The year of birth of Benedikt Gambs can only be deduced from the fact that he was 48 years old at his death in 1751 according to the entry in the parish register of Ebnet. He was a student of the Kempten court painter Franz Benedikt Hermann , the father of Franz Georg Hermann . His teaching business also dealt with making copies of famous paintings by Dutch and Italian baroque masters. Franz Georg Hermann had studied in Rome for 8 years. Through him and through his work on the painting of the monastery of Ottobeuren , where he must have met the Venetian Jocopo Amigoni , Gambs got to know Italian painting.
No later than 1737–1739 he worked as a journeyman to the Ottobeur painter Franz Anton Erler in the painting of the parish church of Kisslegg , where the first paintings are attributed to him.
The focus of Gambs' work was not in the Allgäu, but in Breisgau, to which he migrated in 1740. In Breisgau in Upper Austria, the economic situation had slowly improved after the constant disputes in the wake of the Thirty Years' War since Maria Theresa came to power. But now there was a lack of local talent in the artistic fields. Foreign artists poured into this gap, mainly from Tyrol, Vorarlberg and Allgäu, where there were a large number of talented painters who were only able to work at a few centers. The painters Johann Pfunner and Simon Göser , the builder Peter Thumb and the plasterer Johann Georg Gigl can be named as examples, among others.
Gambs was employed in Breisgau from 1740 onwards, so that he must have been well established there. He worked in various cities until he finally applied for academic citizenship at the University of Freiburg in 1751.
For craftsmen, academic citizenship was a legal way to escape the strict guild compulsory. No secular court was allowed to judge the clergy, who in the early days mainly worked at the universities, so that a separate legal community developed, to which not only the scholars belonged, but also everyone who was connected to the university in any way. A well-known artist who worked in Freiburg on the basis of academic citizenship was Johann Christian Wentzinger .
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Gambs was granted academic citizenship on November 6, 1751. But he could no longer enjoy it because he died on November 15, 1751 in Ebnet, probably of the consequences of pneumonia. There he is buried in St. Hilary's Church .
Shortly before his death, Gambs had married the maid of honor Veronica Queen on April 25, 1751 , whom he must have met while working at Ebnet Castle - his daughter Carolina Catharina Caecilia was born after his death on March 13, 1752.
plant
Benedikt Gambs mainly created ceiling and wall frescoes in baroque churches as well as a number of altarpieces.
His first works in Breisgau were the ceiling painting of the Assumption of Mary and the wall frescoes in a room on the upper floor of the Freiburg canon house, Münsterplatz 36, signed “BeneDict Gambs Fecit 1740”. The Sebastian altar in the parish church of St. Martin in Freiburg-Hochdorf and two other side altar paintings from Wasenweiler, which are now in the parish church of St. Gallus in Norsingen , date from the same year .
1745–1747 Gambs painted the parish church of St. Martin in Riegel, for which he also created the altarpieces. Unfortunately, all of the paintings were destroyed by fire in 1936. A ceiling painting from 1747 from Endingen am Kaiserstuhl depicting the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Salomon has been preserved - relined on canvas - in the Augustinian Museum in Freiburg. An upper picture of the high altar from the preacher's monastery in Freiburg with a depiction of God the Father from the same year hangs today in the parish church of Kappel .
Between 1748 and 1750 Gambs worked once in Hegau, where he created the frescoes and high altar paintings in Hilzingen in the parish church of St. Peter and Paul (Franz Ludwig Herrmann took over the side altars after his death).
In 1750 Gambs painted the parish church of St. Michael in Appenweier , created five ceiling paintings in Ebnet Castle (here, after his death, Johann Pfunner took over the further painting of the staircase), including that of the garden hall, and painted a side altar painting for the parish church of St. Hilarius in Ebnet with Saint Sebastian.
The last significant work by Benedikt Gambs in 1751 was the large ceiling field in the monastery library of St. Peter . Abbot Steyrer had set the theme : The painting represents “the father of light and the holy. Spirit as it did the writers of the Old and New Testaments, as well as the Heil. Enter their books into the fathers of the Church. ”In the center of the picture, Gambs presents the spirit dove in the earth, from which rays of light emanate. God the Father rests his arm on the globe on which lies a book with seven seals, above which in turn Christ appears in the form of a lying lamb with the flag of the cross. This trinity is surrounded by a wreath of seven angels holding open books. This dance of angels is interrupted by the figure of Mary kneeling on a cloud, who at the same time bridges the deep abyss between the adherents of the old and the new covenant, who stand below her on two rock heights. For the first time, Gambs not only refers to his painterly work in the signature, but also emphasizes his artistic design: “Benedict Gambs invenit et pinxit 1751”.
At the same time as this fresco, Benedikt Gambs painted the high altar paintings for the St. Peter and Paul Priory in St. Ulrich , which was incorporated into St. Peter's Abbey.
reception
Benedikt Gambs was "only an average talented painter", as May-Schillock sums it up. Occasionally he had difficulty reproducing the anatomy of people correctly, which he covered over with clever draperies. He almost always used engravings from other artists or his knowledge of certain works in order to translate them into his picture compositions. Precisely because of this, however, he successfully conveyed the Kempten and Allgäu baroque painting to southwest Germany, whereby he was also influenced by the Augsburg and Italian painting due to his training. In this way he was able to give artistic impulses that were taken up even by important baroque masters such as Johann Christian Wentzinger and Johann Pfunner.
Benedikt Gambs created his masterpiece in the monastery library of St. Peter. Because of the task assigned to him by Abbot Steyrer, he could not directly fall back on role models. He had to use his imagination and create his own work. This was done "masterfully", and "everyone admired the value and elegance of his painting", as Brommer put it. The art-loving Abbot Steyrer expressed his exuberant appreciation. Obviously Gambs himself was proud of his achievement: "Benedikt Gambs invenit ...". Due to his sudden death, one can only speculate about his possible further development.
literature
- Bettina May-Schillok: Benedikt Gambs, an Allgäu painter in Breisgau , Freiburg Diocesan Archive, Volume 108, 1988, pp. 341–396 [3]
- Hermann Brommer : Benedikt Gambs and Johann Pfunner. Two important baroque painters in Ebnet Castle. In: Freiherrlich Gayling von Altheim'sches Gesamtarchiv Schloß Ebnet (Ed.): Barockschloss Ebnet , pp. 104–110. Schnell and Steiner, Munich and Zurich 1989. ISBN 3-7954-0468-1
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mirko Gutjahr: Academic Citizenship 1554–1881 , online [1]
- ↑ Church of the Month October 2005 of the Archdiocese of Freiburg, online [2]
- ↑ May-Schillock, p. 378
- ↑ May-Schillock, p. 395
- ↑ May-Schillock, p. 355
- ↑ May-Schillock, p. 393 ff; Brommer, p. 106
- ↑ May-Schillock, pp. 377, 388, 396; Brommer, p. 105
- ^ Brommer, as above
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Gambs, Benedict |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German artist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 1703 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Gestratz near Lindau |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 15, 1751 |
| Place of death | Level |