Adam Elsheimer
Adam Elsheimer | |
---|---|
Johann Rottenhammer | |
Notable work | The Flight into Egypt |
Spouse | Carla Antonia Stuart (1606-1610) |
Elected | Accademia di San Luca, Rome (1606) |
Patron(s) | Francesco Maria del Monte[1] |
Adam Elsheimer (18 March 1578 – 11 December 1610)[2] was a German artist working in Rome, who died at only thirty-two, but was very influential in the early 17th century in the field of Baroque paintings. His relatively few paintings were small-scale, nearly all painted on copper plates, of the type often known as cabinet paintings. They include a variety of light effects, and an innovative treatment of landscape. He was an influence on many other artists, including Rembrandt and Peter Paul Rubens.
Life and work
Elsheimer was born in
His stay in
Elsheimer is believed to have produced some significant works in Venice, such as The Baptism of Christ (
Rome
In early 1600, Elsheimer arrived in Rome and quickly made friends with contacts of Rottenhammer, notably Giovanni Faber, a Papal doctor, botanist and collector originally from Bamberg. He was Curator of the Vatican Botanical Garden, and a member of the Accademia dei Lincei, a small intellectual coterie founded in 1603, and mainly concerned with the natural sciences.
Another friend of Rottenhammer was the Flemish landscape painter
Both Faber and Bril knew Rubens, who was in Rome in 1601, and who became another friend, later reproaching Elsheimer for not producing more work. He knew David Teniers the Elder, recently Rubens' pupil, and there is evidence that they lodged together. In 1604 Karel van Mander, a Dutchman recently returned from Rome, published his Schilder-Boeck which praised Elsheimer's work, and described him as slow-working and making few drawings. He also spent much time in churches, studying the works of the masters. Other writers mention his exceptional visual memory, his melancholy and his kind-heartedness. In a letter after his death, Rubens wrote: "he had no equal in small figures, landscapes, and in many other subjects. ...one could have expected things from him that one has never seen before and never will see."
In 1606, Elsheimer married Carola Antonia Stuarda da Francoforte (i.e. Stuart of Frankfurt – she was of Scottish ancestry and a fellow Frankfurter), and in 1609 they had a son. The son was not mentioned in a census a year later, possibly (Klessman says optimistically) because he had been put out to a
Elsheimer's painting of Tobias and the Angel (1602–1603; the "small" Tobias, now at Frankfurt) was especially well received because of its new conception of landscape. This picture was engraved by Count
Elsheimer had a definite preference for choosing rare or original subjects, both for his mythological and religious paintings.
Influence
His perfectionism, and an apparent tendency to depression, resulted in a small total output, despite the small size of all his pictures. In all about forty paintings are now generally agreed to be by him (see Kressmann below). He made a few etchings, but not very successfully. However, his work was highly regarded by other artists and a few important collectors for its quality. He had a clear and direct influence on other Northern artists who were in Rome such as Paul Bril, Jan Pynas, Leonaert Bramer and Pieter Lastman, later Rembrandt's master, who was probably in Rome by 1605. Rembrandt's first dated work is a Stoning of St Stephen which appears to be a response to Elsheimer's painting of the subject, now in Edinburgh. Some works by Italian artists, such as the six pictures from Ovid by Carlo Saraceni now in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, also show Elsheimer's clear influence. Rubens, who owned at least four of his works, knew Elsheimer in Rome, and praised him highly in a letter after his death.
In a wider sense, he was influential in three respects. Firstly his night scenes were highly original. His lighting effects in general were very subtle, and very different from those of Caravaggio. He often uses as many as five different sources of light. He graduates the light relatively gently, with the less well-lit parts of the composition often containing important parts of it.
Secondly, his combination of poetic landscape with large foreground figures gives the landscape a prominence that had rarely been seen since the Early Renaissance. His landscapes do not always feature an extensive view; often the lushness of the vegetation closes it off. They are more realistic, but no less poetic, than those of Bril or
Thirdly, his integration of Italian styles with the German tradition he was trained in is perhaps more effective than that of any Northern painter since
Galleries
The largest collection of his work is in
There are drawings in Paris (Musée du Louvre) and Edinburgh among other locations.
Only two works are on public display outside Europe. One is in the
Examples of his work
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Venus and Cupid, c. 1600, Berlin
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The Flight into Egypt, oil on silvered copper, c. 1605, only 9.8 cm high, Kimbell Art Museum
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The Denial of Peter, 1605,Städelsches Kunstinstitut
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Apollo and Coronis, 1606–08
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Latona and theWallraf-Richartz Museum
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The Flight into Egypt (c. 1609), Alte Pinakothek, Munich—perhaps his most famous night scene
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Jupiter and Mercury in the house of Philemon and Baucis, c. 1608, Dresden, 17 x 22 cm
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Adam Elsheimer, Ceres and Stelio, 19th century, photogravure, Department of Image Collections, National Gallery of Art Library, Washington, DC
See also
References
- JSTOR 1482611.
- ^ "Adam Elsheimer (1578 - 1610) | National Gallery, London". www.nationalgallery.org.uk. Retrieved 4 March 2021.
- ^ "Adam Elsheimer". Digital Collection. Retrieved 4 March 2021.
- ^ "Discovering the World in Detail". Städel Museum. Retrieved 4 March 2021.
- ^ JSTOR 1348750.
- ^ "Discovering the World in Detail" exhibition Edinburgh information. For the catalogue by Rüdiger Klessmann and others, see References.
- ^ Kimbell Art Museum. "The Flight into Egypt". kimbellart.org. Kimbell Art Museum. Retrieved 9 March 2015.
- ^ "Etherington". Aeac.ca. 12 August 2012. Retrieved 15 January 2014.
- ^ Klessmann, pp. 138–145, 198, 205 (the last two on the provenance, on which the authors seem not wholly in accord)
Main source
Source unless otherwise stated
- Rüdiger Klessmann and others, Adam Elsheimer 1578-1610, 2006, Paul Holberton publishing/National Galleries of Scotland; ISBN 1-903278-78-3
Further reading
- ISBN 3-8296-0244-8
- Bachner, Franziska. "Gleichartigkeit und Gegensatz: Zur Figurenbildung bei Adam Elsheimer". In: Städel-Jahrbuch. Neue Folge, Bd. 16, 1997, S. 249–256.
- Bachner, Franziska. Figur und Erzählung in der Kunst Adam Elsheimers. Würzburg, 2006. (Dissertation, Universität Würzburg, 1995).
- Baumstark, Reinhold (Hrsg.). Von Neuen Sternen. Adam Elsheimers "Flucht nach Ägypten". Anlässlich der Ausstellung Von Neuen Sternen. Adam Elsheimers Flucht nach Ägypten, Alte Pinakothek, München, 17. Dezember 2005 bis 26. Februar 2006. Katalog von ISBN 3-8321-7583-0
- Bell, Julian. Natural Light: The Art of Adam Elsheimer and the Dawn of Modern Science. Thames & Hudson, 2023.
- Holzinger, Ernst (1959), "Elsheimer, Adam", Neue Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 4, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 465–466; (full text online)
- Klessmann, Rüdiger u. a. Im Detail die Welt entdecken: Adam Elsheimer 1578–1610. Ausstellungskatalog des ISBN 3-938832-06-1
- Lenz, Christian. Adam Elsheimer. Die Gemälde im Städel. Ausstellung 1977 im Städelschen Kunstinstitut. Frankfurt am Main: Städel, 1977.
- Sello, Gottfried. Adam Elsheimer. München: Beck, 1988. ISBN 3-406-32026-0
- Thielemann, Andreas & Stefan Gronert (Hrsg.) Adam Elsheimer in Rom: Werk – Kontext – Wirkung. München: Hirmer, 2008. ISBN 978-3-7774-4255-6
- Woltmann, Alfred (1877), "Elsheimer, Adam", Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 6, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, p. 66
- Parlato, Enrico, Elsheimer, Adam, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 42, 1993, https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/adam-elsheimer_(Dizionario-Biografico)/?search=ELSHEIMER%2C%20Adam
External links
Media related to Adam Elsheimer at Wikimedia Commons
- Web Gallery of Art
- Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, a fully digitized exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries, which contains material on Adam Elsheimer (see index)
- Artcyclopedia