Johann Schaper

This article deals with the painter Johann Schaper. For the physician and politician see Johann Ernst Schaper .

Johann Schaper (* 1621 in Hamburg , † 1670 in Nuremberg ) was a Nuremberg glass and faience painter of the German Baroque . He was the world's most famous representative of black solder painting .

Life

Johann Schaper came from Hamburg . Little is known about his youth. He has been recorded in the Netherlands and Switzerland before he settled in Nuremberg in 1655 , where he lived until his untimely death in 1670.

As a house painter , Schaper was a freelance artist who signed in his own name, which was still the exception among glass and faience painters in the 17th century. The signature consisted alternately of his full name or his initials JS

plant

Schaper's motives are diverse. They range from scenes of war, sieges and conquests of cities, Italianizing Commedia dell'Arte scenes to mythological landscapes and genre scenes.

For his stained glass, Schaper obtained a special type of cylindrical beaker on three (more rarely four) flattened hollow spherical feet. There are also goblets with a domed lid and a baluster knob. This shape can be identified worldwide as "Schaper glass". However, not every glass of this type is personally painted by the artist.

Schaper also decorated faience in black solder painting. He obtained the material from the faience factories in Frankfurt and Hanau, because at that time there was no production in Nuremberg.

Schaper's works are exhibited in museums such as the Passauer Glasmuseum , the Landesmuseum Württemberg in Stuttgart and the Cleveland Museum of Art .

In February 2000, a valuable Schaper glass was stolen from the Hentrich glass museum of the museum kunst palast in Düsseldorf during a deer hunt.

A signed Schaper glass hardly ever reaches the free market.

literature

• The great picture lexicon of antiques. Bertelsmann, 1976
• Claudia Horbach, Renate Möller: Glass from the baroque to the present. World Art Antiques Guide. Munich / Berlin 1998.
• Rudolf von Strasser and Walter Spiegl: Decorated Glass. Renaissance to Biedermeier . Munich: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1989, p.