Hans Mielich

Hans Mielich or Zentz (* 1516 in Munich ; † March 10, 1573 there ), also called Muelich or Müelich , was a German painter and draftsman of the late Renaissance , who was best known for his portraits , miniatures and illuminations . He worked for over 30 years as a painter to the wealthy middle class in Munich and is still considered one of the most important visual artists in the history of the city to this day. The most famous work of his school is the high altar of the Liebfrauenmünster in Ingolstadt .

Life

Hans Mielich. Self-portrait, 1565

He was born as the son of the city painter Wolfgang Mielich, who has been documented in Munich since 1509, and received his first training in his workshop, where he worked from 1528 a. a. came into contact with Ludwig Refinger and Barthel Beham . Around 1536 he went to Regensburg, where he was under the influence of Albrecht Altdorfer and the Danube School . He returned to Munich in 1540 at the latest, and in 1541 he traveled to Rome at the instigation of Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria . After his return, Mielich stayed in his hometown for the rest of his life. On July 11, 1543, the Munich painters' guild accepted him. Through his acquaintance with the art-savvy Albrecht V , who gave him more and more commissions from 1545/46 and with whom he soon became a close friend, Mielich became a valued court painter, whose artistic horizon and education went beyond the guild practice that was customary at the time and allowed him to join the wealthy patricians. In 1558 the guild elected him leader. A court painter of the same name, Duke Heinrich XI, who was proven in Liegnitz around 1570 and died in 1613 . was probably Mielich's son.

plant

Descent from the Cross (1536)

In the old Bavarian period, Hans Mielich was considered the most important visual artist in the city of Munich. Many of his commissioned works have sacred motifs, in addition to which he created a wealth of portraits and historical pictures . During his time in Regensburg, after initially being influenced by Barthel Beham, Mielich developed an expressive color style, which was initially reflected in the illustration of the title page of the Freedom Book (1536). One of the early religious works of art of this time was the Descent from the Cross (1536), which shows his attachment to the tradition of the Bavarian late Gothic . The portrait of Saint Jerome and the Calvary (1539), created in the same year, already indicates the suggestion received from Altdorfer and the Danube School for the mannerism of depicting nature.

In Rome Mielich got to know the contemporary religious painting of the early Italian Mannerists. He owed them the representation of the naked human body, its expression of movement and the perspective possibilities of the figure in space. The unfinished mockery of Christ and the burial (1543) on a passion altar in the Frauenkirche opened this creative phase, which also includes the league salt epitaph (1540) with the conversion of Saul , Christ triumphant and St. Martin and the beggar . Numerous portraits such as that of Pankraz von Freyberg zu Hohenaschau and his wife Maria Kitscher (1545) as well as the double portrait of Duke Albrecht and Anna of Austria (1546) were made as altarpieces . Mielich preferred the forms of representation as half-figure or hip image. The grave portrait painted in 1554 for Leonhard von Eck and his wife Felicitas von Freyberg took up the Italian Renaissance again; in the upper part, Mielich quoted Michelangelo's Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel . In this section he sought a synthesis of Italian art with the Dürer style , which he realized in numerous devotional and epitaph paintings. Other portraits from this period show Peter Fröschl (1540), Wilhelm IV. On the death bed (1550), Hans and Elsbeth Tucher (1551) and finally the full-length Duke Ladislaus of Haag (1556/57). At the end of the middle period, Mielich's work increasingly assumed mannerist features.

Saint Catherine in dispute . Back of the Ingolstadt high altar (completed in 1572)

A major work of the late creative period and at the same time a major work of the South German Counter-Reformation is the high altar of the Liebfrauenmünster in Ingolstadt . Mielich created the more than 90 individual images of the convertible altar between 1560 and 1572 together with the members of his workshop. The hand-made preliminary drawings even surpass the later elaborations in their flowing representation of movements based on the Italian model.

In addition to panel paintings in oil and mixed media , which were already fully developed at the time , Mielich produced drawings as a preliminary stage for the woodcut . One of the best-known works of this genre is the field camp of Emperor Charles V outside Ingolstadt (1546), which Christoph Zwikopf cut in wood in 1549. The miniature inventories included the inventories of jewels by Albrecht (1546–55) and his wife Anna (1552–55), who recorded the works of art and relics of the ducal couple in watercolor drawings , and the artistic design of the motets Cypriano de Rores (1557–59, 300 pages) and the Psalms of Penance Orlando di Lassos (1560–71, 400 pages). He was an artist friendship with the latter composer. Finally, some designs for gold necklaces, pendants and a magnificent dagger, attributed to Mielich, have survived.

Pictures (selection)

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  Portrait of Peter Fröschl (1540)

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  Portrait of a Young Man (1550)

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  Portrait of Count Ladislaus von Haag with the panther (1557)

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  Portrait of a Young Woman (1560)

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  Crucifixion (Bellas Artes Madrid)

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  Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria, with family (1572)

literature

• Kurt Holes: Hans Mielich (1516–1573). Portrait painter in Munich (= Art Studies. 100) Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-422-06358-7
• Gudula Metze: Hans Mielich (Muelich) . In: Jürgen Wurst, Alexander Langheiter (Ed.): Monachia . Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-88645-156-9 , p. 114
• Jürgen Rapp: The league salt epitaph of the Munich renaissance painter Hans Mielich . In: Anzeiger des Germanisches Nationalmuseums 1987 . Berlin / Nuremberg 1988, pp. 161-193.
• Bernhard Hermann Röttger : The painter Hans Mielich . Schmidt, Munich 1925
• Katharina Urch:  Müelich, Hans. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , pp. 263-265 ( digitized version ).
• Max Georg Zimmermann:  Müelich, Hans . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1885, pp. 440-442.

Web links

Commons : Hans Mielich  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Hans Mielich in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by Hans Mielich at Zeno.org .
• Rore-Codex - magnificent choir book with miniatures by the court painter Hans Mielich in the bavarikon cultural portal