Sigismund Streit

Sigismund Streit (born April 13, 1687 in Berlin , † December 20, 1775 in Padua ) was a German merchant, collector and patron of the arts in Venice .

Sigismund Streit by Jacopo Amigoni , 1739, Gemäldegalerie Berlin

Streit was the son of the master blacksmith and armorer (the citizen and beer brewer) David Streit and Eva Maria Melzow in Berlin. From 1697 to 1701 he attended the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Berlin because his father wanted him to study and become a pastor. In 1701 he became an orphan, left school and went to a relative in Altona to become a businessman. Via Leipzig he went to Venice in 1709 (he covered the distance on foot), where he worked his way up from poor circumstances (he began as a merchant and clerk in the office ) to wealth (with his own palazzo on the Grand Canal ). With the small inheritance from his father in 1715 he made his own . In 1754 he retired in Padua . In Venice he was known as an art collector and commissioner for painters, alongside Giovanni Antonio Canal, among others, Antoine Pesne , Jacopo Amigoni , Giuseppe Nogari , Francesco Zuccarelli . He began collecting at a relatively advanced age in the 1740s.

In 1724 he again visited Germany (with his hometown Berlin), England and the Netherlands. He never married and had no children.

In 1752 and 1760 he bequeathed his fortune to the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Berlin. The cash assets alone amounted to 60,000 thalers, plus paintings by Canaletto, Amigoni, Nogari, Zuccarelli (49 paintings in total), engravings, music and books, among others. He specified the use of the inheritance precisely, so that interest increased the estate. The collection survived the Second World War with few losses. It is still owned by the Streitschen Foundation today. The Foundation has loaned the paintings in the collection to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation , which is showing selected pictures in the Gemäldegalerie Berlin .

He was buried in Venice in the former Protestant cemetery on the island of St. Christoph.

Other contemporary collectors in Venice were Field Marshal Count Matthias Johann von der Schulenburg and the British Consul Joseph Smith .

literature

Anton Friedrich Büsching : Biography of Sigismund Streit , Berlin 1776 (by the director of the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster, with a list of bequeathed paintings in the appendix)
Fritz Jonas : Quarrel, Sigismund . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 36, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1893, p. 565 f.
Francis Haskell: Patrons and Painters. Art and Society in Baroque Italy. Yale University Press 1980
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz (ed.): View of the Grand Canal: Venice and the collection of the Berlin merchant Sigismund Streit , catalog for the exhibition: September 6, 2002 - January 12, 2003,

Web links

Commons : Sigismund Streit - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

↑ His grandfather was also a blacksmith in Spandau
↑ Depicted on the commissioned painting by Giovanni Antonio Canal The Grand Canal with a view of the Rialto Bridge , 1761, Gemäldegalerie Berlin

↑ The collection of the Gray Monastery had 45,000 volumes before the Second World War, around 14,000 survived the war. Controversial Collection (under "Special Collections")

personal data
SURNAME	Quarrel, Sigismund
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German merchant and patron
DATE OF BIRTH	April 13, 1687
PLACE OF BIRTH	Berlin
DATE OF DEATH	December 20, 1775
Place of death	Padua

[1] His grandfather was also a blacksmith in Spandau

[2] Depicted on the commissioned painting by Giovanni Antonio Canal The Grand Canal with a view of the Rialto Bridge , 1761, Gemäldegalerie Berlin

[3] The collection of the Gray Monastery had 45,000 volumes before the Second World War, around 14,000 survived the war. Controversial Collection (under "Special Collections")