Ignaz Raab

Painting "James the Elder" by Ignaz Raab (detail)

Ignaz Viktorin Raab , also Ignatius Victorin Raab , incorrectly Ignaz Joseph Raab , Czech Ignác Viktorin Raab (born September 5, 1715 in Nechanice , † February 2, 1787 in Velehrad ) was a Bohemian church painter of the late Baroque and Rococo.

Life

Raab was born as the twelfth child of Franz Raab. As he was artistically gifted, his father sent him to train as a Jičín baroque painter Johann Georg Major ( Jan Jiří Major ), who came from Friuli .

In 1744 Raab entered the Jesuit order as a novice in Brno . After the end of the two-year novitiate, Raab worked at various religious houses, so in 1747 in Uherský Brod , 1750 in Uherské Hradiště , 1751 in Olomouc and 1752 in Jihlava , where he was mainly active as a painter. In Kutná Hora , where he worked between 1754 and 1756, Raab initially worked as an assistant in the building works and last year again as a painter. Between 1758 and 1771 Raab worked at the Prague Clementinum , where he a. a. 21 portraits from the life of St. Aloisius of Gonzaga and 26 of St. Stanislaus Kostka created. In 1770 he interrupted his work at the Clementinum and wrote four altarpieces for the Church of St. Ignatius in Prague's New Town . The painter Josef Kramolín was one of his employees at that time . Furthermore, Rabb was also active in Klatovy and Opava .

After the Jesuit order was abolished in 1773, Raab was accepted into the Velehrad monastery by the Cistercians . Here he also created a variety of paintings. At this time Raab had passed his artistic peak and classicist elements were increasingly finding their way into his light rococo style. When the Velehrad monastery was dissolved as part of the Josephine reforms in 1784, Raab had to reorient his life again. He decided to stay in Velehrad and earned his living as a painter. Raab almost never signed his pictures.

Works

Raab created a variety of altarpieces and frescoes. These include a. Altarpieces in the Church of St. Ignatius in the New Town of Prague, the Church of St. Niklas on the Lesser Town of Prague, the St. Bartholomew's Church in Kolín , the Church in Ostředek , the St. Marienthal Monastery Church , the Trinity Church in Fulnek , the St. James Church in Jičín , the Provost Church of St. Hippolyt in Hradiště sv. Hypolita , the Parish Church of the Assumption and John of Nepomuk in Kvasice , the Piarist Church of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary in Bílá Voda , the Pilgrimage Church of Křtiny and the Pilgrimage Church of Our Lady of Sorrows in Bohosudov as well as vaulted frescoes in the monastery church of the Assumption on Strahov.

literature

• Constantin von Wurzbach : Raab, Ignaz Joseph . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 24th part. Imperial and Royal Court and State Printing Office, Vienna 1872, pp. 158–160 ( digitized version ).

Web links

• Biography on jesuit.cz (Czech)
• Biography and description of his paintings in the church in Kvasice (Czech)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Thieme-Becker, Vol. 23, p. 580.