Paul von Praun (merchant)

Paul von Praun (born October 23, 1548 in Nuremberg , † July 18, 1616 in Bologna ) was a German merchant and art collector .

Life

Paul II von Praun came from the Protestant Nuremberg patrician family Praun . His father Stephan II. Praun (1513–78) appointed him senior family. He was active in Bologna for a long time through the trade in silk fabrics and seems to have converted to the Catholic faith in order to bypass the obstacles of the Inquisition .

Paul von Praun was the creator of the Praunschen Kabinett , a famous private collection in Nuremberg that existed from 1616 to 1801. He founded this collection in Bologna. He had inherited an art chamber from his father , whose works of art he could integrate. He enriched the collection with numerous native and especially Italian paintings from the 16th century.

Paul von Praun remained single. In his will, Praun decreed that the art collection, together with the foundation house, the household effects, capital and income as an advance , a special legal form of Nuremberg inheritance law, should be inseparably preserved and expanded. After his death in Bologna in 1616, the collection was transferred to the Praunsche Stiftungshaus in Nuremberg and exhibited.

literature

• Katrin Achilles Syndram:  Praun, Paulus. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , p. 678 ( digitized version ).
• The Praunsche Cabinet. Masterpieces from Dürer to Carracci. Exhib. Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg 1994.
• Rainer Schoch : The Praunsche Cabinet. An art collection as a »advance«. In: Anette Scherer (Red.): Patrons, donors, donors. The Germanic National Museum and its collections. Nuremberg 2002 (= cultural-historical walks in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum , vol. 5), pp. 47–52.