Valentin Wagner

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Self-portrait of Valentin Wagner from the Niddaer Sauhatz 1633, detail
Rider Hans Schott slides down the banister (Butzbach, 1633)
Vanitas allegory in the Germanic National Museum
Riding accident of the Rittmeister Caspar von Plato

Valentin Wagner (* around 1610 in Dresden ; † 1655 there ) was a German draftsman in the 17th century during the Thirty Years War .

Life

There is only very fragmentary information about the life of Valentin Wagner. His father of the same name had settled in Dresden, the royal seat of the Electorate of Saxony , and worked there as a painter. Valentin Wagner d. Ä. had achieved considerable wealth. On May 31, 1606 he acquired the citizenship of Dresden. In the same year he bought for 650  fl the house Wilsdruffer street no. 21st

The year of birth of the son, who also became a painter, can only be inferred because he often depicted himself as a marginal figure in his portrayed scenes. In the earliest known sketches, Valentin Wagner the Elder appears. J. as a young, medium-sized, slim man - around his mid-twenties - in the fashion of the time with a pointed Henri Quatre beard , from which the year of birth around 1610 is deduced. Presumably he was an apprentice to his father. The earliest sketches are from around 1627.

Valentin Wagner left Dresden before his father's death in 1632. A journeyman journey took him via Würzburg , Nuremberg and Regensburg to Vienna , which is evident from the dated sketches in his travel sketchbook. In 1631 he also traveled to Frankfurt am Main , where he would later stay for longer periods of time. During these years he seems to have been in contact with numerous better-known artists, especially the Frankfurt Painters Society founded in 1630 , including Philipp Uffenbach , Matthäus Merian the Elder. Ä., Johann Lorenz Müller and Johann Elsheimer . Also Wenzel Hollar held at this time in Frankfurt and worked in the workshop Merian. The contacts may go back to Wilhelm Dilich , who was born in Hesse and worked in Dresden since 1625.

In 1631/32 Wagner accompanied Landgrave Philip III. von Hessen-Butzbach on his travels to court in East Friesland . In the following time he visited numerous places in Hesse, partly in the wake of the Landgrave, partly alone or with other people. His sketches show views of Bad Schwalbach , Adolfseck , Darmstadt and Nidda as well as trips to the Odenwald ( Rodenstein Castle ) and the Vogelsberg . Valentin Wagner traveled to his hometown Dresden in 1634, but is soon to be found in Hesse again , where he stayed in Darmstadt, Frankfurt, Hanau and Butzbach . Nothing is known about his whereabouts from the years 1635 and 1637. He paid his citizenship money in Dresden in 1636 and seems to have moved into the parental home there soon afterwards. The travel sketchbook has no later dated views.

Presumably he had established himself in Dresden during this time and received numerous commissions there. On behalf of the Saxon court, he painted several miniature portraits, including those of Elector Johann Georg I and his wife Magdalena Sibylle of Prussia . High court officials like Christian Reichbrod zu Schrenckendorff or the court preacher Jakob Weller von Molsdorf were also among his customers. Drawings with scenes from the Old Testament and historical pictures can also be documented in the Dresden Kunstkammer . No further dates of life are known until his death in 1655. However, this is also due to the fact that the drawings and sketches that have survived did not represent his main work.

plant

Wagner referred to himself as a conterfacter (portrait painter) in his entry in the Dresden civic register in 1636 . Only two paintings ascribed to him are known of his main activity as a painter. It is a vanitas allegory that is in the holdings of the Germanic National Museum and a painting of the robbery of the Sabine women . His surviving sketches are of great importance, especially the travel sketchbook, which is kept in the Albertina in Vienna , as well as a hunting sketchbook ( Niddaer Sauhatz ) in the Hessian State Archives in Darmstadt .

The sketches can be divided into three subject areas: depictions of places and landscapes, portraits of people and animals, and humorous everyday scenes. They often show representations in the smallest of spaces with just a few lines, whereby Wagner's skills as a painter of miniatures become clear. He took more care on the portrait sketches. The everyday scenes in which Wagner deliberately tried to capture the situation comedy are unique, which is underlined by the dates and names in the sketches. In contrast to the more well-known painters from the time of the Thirty Years' War such as Jacques Callot and Hans Ulrich Franck , Wagner did not sketch the horrors of the war, but rather vivid scenes from this period.

Until the 1940s Wagner was one of the many lesser-known artists of the 17th century. It was only since this time that an intensified engagement with his generation of artists, which was shaped by the Thirty Years' War, began. Valentin Wagner's oeuvre was honored from February 13 to April 20, 2003 with an exhibition in the Hessian State Museum in Darmstadt .

  • View of Rodenstein Castle in the Odenwald. (1634)

  • Bench collapses under Valentin Wagner. (Nidda 1633)

  • Zeil and Katharinenkirche in Frankfurt am Main. (1631)

  • Castle Adolfseck , gate tower and palas of the castle with bay window, in front of it a table group under a linden tree. (1631)

  • The gardener and a gentleman break into a seepage pit at Butzbach. (Butzbach 1633)

literature

  • Wagner, Valentin . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 35 : Libra-Wilhelmson . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1942, p. 53 .
  • Winfried Wackerfuß: Rodenstein - Lichtenberg - Darmstadt. Valentin Wagner's views and sketches from the time of the 30 Years War. In: Winfried Wackerfuß (Ed.): Contributions to the exploration of the Odenwald and its peripheral landscapes II. Festschrift for Hans H. Weber. Breuberg-Bund, Breuberg-Neustadt 1977, pp. 169-184.
  • Holger Th. Gräf: An unknown view of Leipzig from 1633. In: Leipzig in the map. Leipziger Universitäts-Verlag, Leipzig 2001, ISBN 978-3-935693-19-6 , pp. 17-22.
  • Holger Th. Gräf: News about the painter and draftsman Valentin Wagner (around 1610–1655). In: Art in Hesse and the Middle Rhine. 3, 2008, pp. 23-29.
  • Holger Th. Gräf, Helga Meise (eds.): Valentin Wagner. A draftsman in the Thirty Years War. Exhibition catalog Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt. Hessian State Office for Historical Regional Studies, Darmstadt 2003, ISBN 3-921254-92-2 .
  • Winfried Wackerfuß: The drawings of the Dresden painter Valentin Wagner at the Rodenstein Castle in 1634. In: The Odenwald . Journal of the Breuberg-Bundes 63/3, 2016, pp. 110–121.

Web links

Commons : Valentin Wagner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Holger Th. Gräf: Valentin Wagner. A biographical sketch. In: Holger Th. Gräf, Helga Meise (ed.): Valentin Wagner. A draftsman in the Thirty Years War. Darmstadt 2003, p. 19.
  2. ↑ a b Holger Th. Gräf: Valentin Wagner. A biographical sketch. In: Holger Th. Gräf, Helga Meise (ed.): Valentin Wagner. A draftsman in the Thirty Years War. Darmstadt 2003, p. 19f.
  3. ↑ Copper engraving based on Wagner's model in the Virtual Kupferstichkabinett ; Copper engraving .
  4. ^ Engraving
  5. ^ Engraving .
  6. ↑ Niddaer Sauhatz: October 11 - November 16, 1633. According to d. Valentin Wagner's hunting book. Hoppenstedts Wirtschafts-Archiv, Darmstadt 1957.
  7. ↑ Hessisches Staatsarchiv Darmstadt Best. R 4 No. 30915.
personal data
SURNAME Wagner, Valentin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German draftsman
DATE OF BIRTH around 1610
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH 1655
Place of death Dresden