Innocent Metz

Painting Mary - mother of beautiful love

Brother Innozenz Metz (* around 1640 in Braunau am Inn , under the real name Franz; † February 3, 1724 in MonasteryChecking , Regensburg ) belonged to the Benedictine order . He became known as the painter of the Wessobrunn miraculous image of Mary, Mother of Beautiful Love (around 1704).

biography

Innocent Metz, whose real name was Franz, was a Nerian (named after the founder of the order and saint Philipp Neri ) when he came to the Säben monastery in Tyrol to serve as a sacristan in the Benedictine monastery. There he was able to further deepen his talent as a painter (training with Carl Loth in Venice). He gathered a circle of students around him, among whom Johann Gebhard soon emerged . Gebhard (1676–1756) was to become the founder of a family of painters of Bavarian rank.

A stroke of fate plunged Franz Metz into mental confusion for years, which he overcame just as unpredictably: A fall into the ice-cold Eisack brought him back to his senses. This July 14, 1694 was to be a turning point in his life. Otto Krafft , Abbot ofprüfunging (1693–1730), who had accompanied him on his almost fatal walk, took him and his student Johann Gebhard with him to Regensburg. Franz Metz, artistically promoted by the abbot, now joined the Benedictine order and took the name Innocent.

Shortly after he had completed the later miraculous image of Wessobrunn (1704), the artist went blind. A Benedictine from Wessobrunn, who was studying theology inprüfung at the time, was so impressed by the portrayal of Mary that he asked his brother for the picture and took it with him to the Wessobrunn monastery . Here it should become the center of a pilgrimage in a short time.

More important works have not survived. The pictures on the Prüfingen choir stalls are said to have been created by him.

literature

• Karl Bauer : Regensburg. Art, culture and everyday history . Mittelbayerische Druck- und Verlags-Gesellschaft, Regensburg 1997, ISBN 3-931904-19-9