DOCUMENTATION | Exhibitions: 1648 - War and Peace in Europe
Essay Volumes > Tome II: Art and culture
ANDREAS TACKE
Mars the Enemy of Art.
Sandrart's Teutsche Academie and the impact of war on art and artists
Time and again Queen Germania saw her Palaces and Churches, decorated with splendid painting, go up in flames, and her eyes were so darkened with smoke and weeping that she no longer had the desire or the strength to pay heed to this Art: Art that now seemed to want only to enter into a long and eternal night and there to sleep. And so such things fell into oblivion, and those that made art their profession fell into poverty and contempt: and so they put away their pallets and must take up the spear or the beggar's staff instead of the paintbrush, while the gently born were ashamed to apprentice their children to such despicable persons.[1]
We will show that Joachim von Sandrart's (1606-1688) suggestion that German artists in the Thirty Years War had to choose between "the spear or the beggar's staff" is not entirely without foundation. But we will have to correct the hitherto prevalent idea that the war brought 17th century art production to a standstill. [2] Even Sandrart's own career, which we will look at in more detail, and compare with those of other contemporary artists, proves precisely the opposite to this commonly held view that the arts went into a decline:
... a kindly Fate took pity on this darkness and caused a new Sun to rise over the world of German Art: it woke the slumbering Mistress Pictura once again, drove away the night and brought the break of day for her. This day came in the person of the Noble and Austere Herr Joachim von Sandrart auf Stockau, Councillor to the High Prince of Pfalz-Neuburg: whom Nature has endowed with a spirit such that it could not choose but shine; the bright beams of his reason were able to lighten the black clouds that lowered upon the noble art of Painting. [3]
In addressing the question before us, namely the effect of the war on art and artists, we are entering the field of research into migration and the diffusion of culture, which is unfamiliar territory for art historians. [4] We intend to make a source-related contribution on this topic.
We first have to emphasize that migration had a long tradition as part of individual artists' careers. Additionally, in many countries - according to the rules of the German "painter's orders", for example, it was essential to have a peripatetic period after apprenticeship, in order to acquire the rank of master. One example here: after his apprenticeship, usually lasting for four years, the painter-journeyman embarked upon an itinerant period; the relevant point in the Nuremberg order says:
in like manner the lad who has become a Journeyman shall wander for 5 years after his four, and attempt something or stay with a master as a Journeyman until the 9th year has passed and be forbidden to make his "prentice piece" or to work for himself. But when the 9th year is past and he has conducted himself worthily and well in his wanderings after the previous 4 years, he is entitled to aspire to create his prentice piece. [5]
Here we are not looking at this itinerant period, essential for training as a painter, but considering the wanderings imposed upon artists by war. In other words, the extent to which the war caused artists to move to different places and even to change their profession. They might move to another place for their own safety, or in search of new commissions: it was not just the artists who "wandered", but the art centres as well. And because as the war progressed major contracts were available for short periods, but in different places, artists simply had to be mobile. Supporting evidence will also be given for these "changing art sites" below.
We turn to Sandrart's Teutsche Academie as a source because no systematic examination of artists' personal records is yet available. Examples will show that such a compilation of written and artistic statements about the war would also be of interest for the question that we are investigating: the Augsburg sculptor Georg Petel (ca. 1601/02 - 1634) recorded a remarkable event in the inscription on his drawing Sklave am Sockel des Standbildes Ferdinands I. de Medici in Livorno (Slave at the Base of the Statue of Ferdinand I de Medici in Livorno): "This same Figure stands in Livorno and while I was drawing I was impounded in hostile fashion in the opinion that I was noting the Ground of the Fordelo Ao 1623: GP". [6] in other words the artist was arrested as a spy while he was drawing and accused of trying to prepare a ground plan of the fortifications. Or the Swiss painter Rudolph Meyer (1605-1638) gave a drawing called Die schlafenden Musen (The Sleeping Muses) [7] to his younger brother Conrad Meyer (1618-1689), who was training to be a painter. He dedicated the sheet to his brother with a short poem. In this he advised Conrad "Although Lord Mars us now doth rule", to continue with his thorough study of painting, so that he would be well equipped for the profession in peacetime. Rudolph Meyer knew what he was talking about, because during his itinerant period as a journeyman - which had taken him to Nuremberg in winter 1631/32 - he had had no alternative, because the city was under siege in the "Swedish War", than to train himself, by tracing and copying art objects he found in the home of his master Johann Hauer (1586-1660). Conrad turns to this difficult period again in the family chronicle: "While he, my beloved late Brother, was in Nörenberg, Gustdavus Adolfus King of Sweden [1594, king 1611-1632] was also in Nörenberg with his army, and also the Imperial army was around Nörenberg and at that time there was drought and hunger in Nörenberg." [8] The Nuremberg painter Michael Herr (1591-1661), of whom Sandrart wrote that he had "profound thoughts", [9] recorded the siege in his painting Der Stadt Nurnberg achtzehen wöchentliche Belagerung im Jahr 1632 (The Eighteen-Week Siege of the City of Nuremberg 1632). [10] His signature on the picture is revealing: "Mich: Her: pictor coævus fecit". So the painter is describing himself as a contemporary witness ("coævus") of what is depicted. Other examples of artists reflecting about themselves in their work during the Thirty Years War would also be worth closer examination [11] - for example the Michael Herr drawing Allegorie auf die Gerechtigkeit, Kunst und Krieg (Allegory of Justice, Art and War) [12] dating from 1630 and, by the same artist, the drawing Allegorische Darstellung: Gesetz, Kunst und Krieg als Herrscher der Welt (Allegorical Representation: Law, Art and War as Rulers of the World) [13 ]or other drawings by Rudolph Meyer like Die ruhenden Künste und Wissenschaften des Dreißigjährigen Krieges (The Arts and Sciences Resting in the Thirty Years War), [14] dating from 1632 and Merkur als Friedensbringer weckt die schlafenden Künste nach dem Krieg (Mercury the Bringer of Peace wakes the Sleeping Arts after the War), [15] also 1632 - but we should follow Sandrart's example and look at the art literature itself.
The short pre-title, by which the work is usually identified, runs Teutsche Academie der Bau- Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste (German Academy of Architecture, Sculpture and Painting). This is followed by a full page copperplate engraving with female personifications of sculpture, painting - this one is enhanced - and of architecture. Then comes the main title page, which is surprising less for its Baroque torrent of words and typographic design, with a huge variety of type sizes, than because the Teutsche Academie actually has an Italian title. In begins with the line, printed in large italics: L'Academia Todesca della Architectura, Scultura & Pittura: Oder Teutsche Academie: the author obviously intends to emphasize that the work is part of the great tradition of European art literature founded by Vasari. [16] The Teutsche Academie reaches its conclusion and climax in "Lebenslauf und Kunst-Werke// Des//WolEdlen und Gestrengen//Herrn//Joachim von Sandrart//auf Stockau/ Hochfürstl. Pfalz-Neuburg=//gischen Rahts:" (Career and art-works of the noble and austere Herr Joachim von Sandrart auf Stockau, councillor to the high prince of Pfalz Neuburg). Sandrart's biography is presented on 24 folio pages, which gives us a view of the effects of the war on art and artists.
Even Sandrart's parents had to leave their home as religious refugees and "moved to the said city of Frankfurt because of the unrest of the Dutch Wars". [17] He was born on 12 May 1606 in Frankfurt am Main as son of the wealthy merchant Laurentius Sandrart and Antonetta de Bodeau, and baptised there on 18 May. Sandrart was obviously deeply affected by the fate of his own family, and so repeatedly refers to the expulsion of Dutch religious refugees in his lives of artists. For example in the life of Hendrik van Steenwyck (Heinrich von Steinweg; c. 1550-1603): "Mars the enemy of Art drove him out of Holland to Frankfurt am Mayn, where he also ended his life Anno 1603." [18] Or, the parents of the painter Cornelis Janssen van Ceulen (1593-1664) "born in the Spanish Netherlands, moved to Londen because of the unrest of the Wars at that time, and this son was born there." [19]
Sandrart came from a Calvinist family who emigrated to Frankfurt from Wallonia and belonged to a culturally enlightened class there. Later in his "Lebenslauf" it is regularly possible to identify his link, so crucial for his career as a painter, with the international Calvinist diaspora. He became familiar with important traditions and developments while he was still a young man in Frankfurt: the city provided the book market with monumental editions of encyclopaedias that remain impressive today; still life painting was practised with great success in the modern two-dimensional style, and the Frankenthal exiles were working not far away; they imported their Dutch culture and included Heinrich von der Borch the Elder (1583-1660) among their number. Borch "was indeed born in Brussels but because of the Dutch and Spanish Wars he had travelled with his family to Germany". [20] Borch was trained as a painter by Gillis von Falckenburg (d. 1622) in the Dutch artists colony in Frankenthal. We shall return to Falckenburg's family below. He settled in Frankenthal again after travelling to Italy, until the upheaval of the Thirty Years War caused a further period of wandering: "After he married he passed several years in Frankenthal, but finally moved to Frankfurt because of the Wars of that time." [21]
Sandrart himself took his first drawing lessons, according to his own statement, [22] from Sebastian Stosskopf (1597-1657) in Hanau. After the death "of Daniel de Soriau [demonstrably after 1586, d. 1619], who was born in the Netherlands, and because of the Spanish War set out and proceeded to the edification of this fine city, with many other people of gentle birth," [23] Stosskopf directed his studio for a short time. In 1620 Sandrart started an apprenticeship with the Nuremberg copperplate engraver Peter Isselburg (c. 1580-1630). The fact that Nuremberg had taken in numerous Calvinist artists from the Netherlands must have affected the choice of this place as well, as previously with Hanau. The emigration from the Netherland unleashed by the war had brought painters to Nuremberg as early as 1560. When Sandrart came here to be trained the second or third generation was already established. One of the first of them was Nikolaus Neufchatel (c. 1527-c. 1590), who was born in the county of Bergen in the Hennegau. The much-connected Juvenel and Falckenburg families should also be mentioned. The son and heir of the Juvenel family of artists from the Netherlands was Nicolaus the Elder. This painter from Dunkirk became a citizen of Nuremberg in 1561 and died there in 1597. His descendants worked in the free imperial city for several generations; initially marrying only into the circle of Dutch exiles. There is evidence of the following painters from the Juvenel family in Nuremberg: Friedrich (1609-1647), Hans (1564-1632), Hans Philipp (b. 1617) and Paulus the Elder (1579-1643); the last died in Pressburg. Heinrich (before 1562-1634) and Jacob (1594-1634) worked as goldsmiths in Nuremberg, and also Paulus Juvenel the Younger (1634-1692), as an enameller. [24] The Valckenborchs, who changed their name to Falckenburg in Nuremberg, fled to Frankfurt from Antwerp because of the war. It was only in the second generation - in Frankfurt there were also family links with the above-mentioned exile Hendrik van Steenwyck - that some of them moved to Nuremberg for a time. When Sandrart was studying under Isselburg the following members of the Falckenburg family were working in Nuremberg: Friedrich von Falckenburg the Elder, born in Antwerp in 1623, died in Nuremberg 1623, also Friedrich the Younger (1598-1653) and Moritz von Falckenburg (1600-1632). [25] Like the Juvenels, Paulus Juvenel the Elder, for example, was involved in restoring Nuremberg Town Hall in 1613; [26] the Falckenburgs also worked successfully in the free imperial city. Friedrich von Falckenburg's name is repeatedly linked with a spinet lid painted in 1619 for Nuremberg patrician Lucas Friedrich Behaim von Schwartzbach (1587-1648); this unusual example of early German Baroque painting is unfortunately unsigned. [27] The picture was painted shortly before Sandrart stayed inside the Nuremberg city walls.
But these precise dates for the Juvenels and Falckenburgs must not distract us from the fact that our knowledge about these artists in Nuremberg is practically non-existent - apart from the most recent source edition of the Nuremberg painters' books; [28] we must also remember that Nuremberg Baroque painting is itself a step-child of art-historical research. [29] Equally, little attention has been paid hitherto to patrons in these early decades of the 17th century. It is clear that there must have been considerable potential from the fact that they included Bartholomäus I Viatis (1538-1624); [30] it is said of the fortune he left that "apart from princes" he must have been "the richest man in Nuremberg, and probably in Germany". [31] Two fruitful publications about Nuremberg merchant Paul II Praun's (1548-1616) passion for collecting make it clear how productive research into these decades can be. [32]
When Isselburg moved to Bamberg in 1622, Sandrart turned to Prague, to Ägidius Sadeler (1570-1629), who was born in Antwerp, in order to perfect his copperplate engraving. The attractions of the "phoenix in this art" [33] and Prague as an artistic metropolis meant more to Sandrart, who was only just fifteen, that the fact that he had chosen an absolutely crisis-ridden spot. The "Bohemian-Palatinate War" had not yet come to an end, and had already driven out numerous artists, as reported by Sandrart in the Teutsche Academie:
Carolo Screta [1610-1674] of Prague was led in good time into a delicate change of morals and virtue and then drawn to the noble Art of Painting, whose fundamental rules he grasped well because of his innate industriousness, and even in his early youth acquired fair praise in this particular: because now, at that very time, the bloodthirsty Mars drove the peace-loving Muses and Arts out of his fatherland, and since he sought to acquire a greater knowledge, he went to Italy and spent several glorious years in Venice and in such a way that he drew the best benefit from every noteworthy thing. [34]
Or Wenzel Hollar (1607-1677) "was robbed of all his noble goods in Prague as a youth through the Bohemian Unrest, but chose to learn the Art of Miniature, in which he then flourished mightily, and made splendid progress in this." [35] And again "Daniel Preißler [1627-1665], painter and portraitist, was born An. 1627 in the Royal Bohemian capital city of Prague, whence his parents proceeded to the Electoral Saxon residence city of Dresden, because of persisting Unrest in matters of faith". [36]
In Prague Sandrart was advised by Sadeler that "he should give up laborious Copperplate Engraving and take up Painting in its stead". [37] He took this to heart and started an apprenticeship as a painter with an Utrecht follower of Caravaggio, Gerard von Honthorst (1590-1656). In 1627 Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) visited Honthorst's studio and took Sandrart with him on a 14-day trip to Holland, during which they visited distinguished painter-colleagues. In 1628 Sandrart accompanied his teacher Honthorst to London as an assistant, where Honthorst worked for Charles I (1600, king 1625-1649). Sandrart remained in the service of the English king when Honthorst returned home. But because of the turmoil of war he soon looked for a "pretext" to be "given leave", and went into this in some detail:
Our H.[err] von Sandrart would not have withdrawn from the favour of so great a Potentate if it had not been for the dangerous conditions in the kingdom of the same. This began Anno 1627 with his most gracious person the Duke of Buckingham: [1592-1628] who, when he wanted to afright the city of Roschelle with the great English Fleet was most pitiably murdered [on 2.9.1628] in his bedroom by his own lieutenant (called Jan Felton). This unforeseen event horrified many foreigners: in that they were driven to concern that the King and others might suffer a similar plight. That this concern was not in vain was manifest subsequently: in that, as is known to the World, Anno 1648, on the order of the Parliament, this Great King (who in height of virtue yielded to no Christian Monarch and was beloved in all places) was brought to trial, and in Londen, by his Royal Palace, on a raised mourning scaffold, and after the sentence had been read out, must offer his Royal Head over a wooden block to the cruel axe of justice, amidst the sighs and tears of many thousand people, some of them sinking into a swoon. And thereafter Herr von Sandrart was given leave, with the pretext that he wanted to perfect his studies in Italy, and afterwards was minded to return to His Majesty. [38]
He was able to leave crisis-torn London in late December. Sandrart travelled via his home town of Frankfurt to Venice, where he spent the spring of 1629 with the German painter Johann Liss (c. 1600-1631). In early summer 1629 he travelled, with his cousin Le Blon (d. 1656) - whose parents had been driven to Frankfurt by the same fate as Sandrart's parents - ("Michael le Blon of Frankfurt, whose parents had proceeded there as a result of protracted and pernicious Spanish and French Wars") [39] - to Bologna. They moved on to Rome via Florence. Sandrart was in Naples in autumn 1631 and went on from there to Messina and Malta. In 1633 he appears in the registration lists of the Roman Accademia di San Luca.
"But after seven years had now passed by, that he had spent in Rome to say nothing of other places, at the beginning of June, after he had looked again at all the Rarities and taken note of all that was necessary and also politely taken his leave of all virtuous Artists, he made his way via Florence, Bologna, Venitia, and through the whole of Lombardy, to Milan. At that time Germany was thrown into turmoil and devastation by the three furies War, Famine and Plague, especially in Alsace, Franconia and by the river Rhine, and everywhere was laid waste and made perilous by Mars, raging in blood and fire: for which reason our Herr Sandrart, after reaching Germany again, travelled in the greatest danger to body and soul via Breisach, Speyer, Frankenthal and Oppenheim toward Frankfurt. Because at that time, Anno 1635, this his fatherland was blockaded with 13,000 men by His Imperial Majesty's General, Count von Gallas [1584-1647], he had to make his way onward on foot in the night of Whitsuntide through the Croatian camp: and indeed he then, with a bush as his shade, arrived happily at the gate at break of day, to the amazement of the sentry. [40]
In Frankfurt he married Johanna Milkau (Mulkeau; 1618-1672) in 1637, the rich daughter of a Calvinist banking family, [41] and took on the eldest Merian boy, Mathäus Merian the Younger (1621-1687), as an apprentice. When Sandrart returned to war-torn Germany from Rome in 1635 - perhaps following a false rumour of peace talks in Prague and hoping for the end of the "Swedish War" - he had chosen the worst possible moment. [42] This assessment is supported all too vividly by his report about cannibalism in Frankfurt: starving peasants tried to take his apprentice to the "slaughtering block":
But because the prosperity of the German Lands had more and more declined, and Famine and Pestilence had so alarming increased that they tried to take his scholar, the young Mathäus Merian, when he had sent the same towards evening to his brother-in-law on an errand, throwing a rope around his neck to throttle him and delivering him to the slaughtering block, around which many a hungry peasant stood, but the lad happily escaped them; this did so perplex him [Sandrart] that he took himself and his own to Amsterdam, that they might have more safety. And there he set up an artful Parnassus of noble Painting...." [43]
After Easter 1637 the young couple moved to Amsterdam via Utrecht, where each had relatives, and contact was soon made with the most important circles there. Compared with war-torn Germany (the great battles on the upper and middle Rhine were just about to break out in the >Swedish-French War') the conditions in flourishing Amsterdam were wonderful. The very fact that people wonder whether the house that Sandrart's cousin Michael le Blon bought in Keizersgracht near the Westerkerk was intended for the young couple shows that Sandrart had his a share of the Gouden Eeuw (Golden Age). In Amsterdam Sandrart switched completely to portrait painting, which was in great demand because so many people were flooding in from southern Holland. In summer 1641 Sandrart was in Munich, where he worked for the Bavarian Elector Maximilian I (1573-1651, Duke from 1597/98, Elector from 1623). [44]
After the death of his father-in-law Philipp Milkau (1583-1644) in 1644, Sandrart's wife Johanna inherited the Stockau estate near Ingolstadt:
But Divine Providence did not intend our H. [err] Sandrart to stay there [in Amsterdam]. When he inherited the country estate of Stockau near Ingolstadt in the Pfalz-Neuburg district he, to the great sorrow of all Art-loving people in Amsterdam.... had to go there to live in this noble seat and take it in charge. But at the urgent request and demand of the Art-lovers of Amsterdam he left all his works of Art even there, against high payments in gold; whereupon he, accompanied by many persons, set off on his journey. [45]
Sandrart had purchased the Stockau estate, [46] which is favourably placed between Augsburg, Munich and Nuremberg, at the time of his marriage as a future inheritance from his father-in-law. Now (1645) he entered into his inheritance as freeholder of his estate of Stockau on the Danube, in the territory of the art-loving Duke of Neuburg and Jülich-Berg, Count Palatinate Wolfgang Wilhelm (1578-1653, Duke from 1609). In 1645 the Count Palatinate granted him the privilege of religious freedom, and from then on Sandrart called himself councillor of Pfalz-Neuburg; one year later he was granted patrimonial jurisdiction of the lord of the manor. Archduke Leopold Wilhelm (1614-1662) visited him in Stockau as early as 1646. He was accompanied by the painter Jan van den Hoecke (1611-1651), who had studied under Rubens and subsequently spent several years in Italy (predominantly in Rome). Sandrart reports his journey home, and thus gives new information about the effects of war on art and artists:
As he was on the way back to his fatherland he was stopped on the way by His Archducal Highness Leopold Wilhelm and stayed with him for many years in the War, since as first-mentioned Archducal Highness did me [Sandrart] the honour Anno 1637 [sic!, 1646 [47]] that they visited me in my castle of Stockau, this Artist was also with him, to whom I showed the piece that I had in hand for His Electoral Highness Maximilian in Bavaria and for the Monastery in Würzburg. [48]
Sandrart had to put a great deal of money into repairing his inherited property. But the continuing war soon ruined everything: "in such sad times" he found
his estate quite spoiled and had to help his oppressed subjects on to their feet again with his own financial resources and also rebuild and repair everything: which he would be happy to do in the hope of being able to set it on the market all the sooner. But what happened was quite different. For when everything was again prospering and in a good state a new storm came in the last Bavarian War Anno 1647 and Stockau unexpectedly became neutral and the castle and the whole beautiful estate belonging to it and also the subjects' 37 fine buildings were set on fire and burned to the ground and reduced to ashes, maliciously and without any reason by those same French who were passing by: all of which he had to watch from a tower in Ingelstadt [Ingolstadt], whither he had taken his furniture, not without heart-breaking melancholy. But when in the following year the long-wished-for messenger of Peace arrived, Herr von Sandrart went about it again and rebuilt everything much more splendidly and comfortably than it had stood before. [49]
The considerable funds needed to do this came from income from the Nuremberg portrait commissions on the occasion of the congress for the implementation of the Peace of Nuremberg. Sandrart worked in the free imperial city, attracted like many other artists by the many opportunities for commissions, from 1649:
When shortly afterwards, Anno 1649, after the dear and greatly longed-for sun of Peace had shone on Germany again after the wretched Thirty Years of War-Storms, and the Estates of the Empire, together with the great Generals of the interested Crowns from home and abroad, partly in person and partly through their excellent ambassadors, assembled in Nuremberg to execute and execute the conclusion of Peace: then the high hand of the sun of Art that was shining through the whole empire with full beams of fame called our Herr von Sandrart thither, [50] to appear himself. And here indeed his incomparable Art-paintbrush obtained full work and opportunity to show himself to the world for its admiration. [51 ]
Sandrart himself gives the number of paintings as "probably eighty on the Swedish side alone"! [52] At Sandrart's side was Daniel Preisler among others, about whose fate we have already reported ("Anno 1628, when my parents left Prague for reasons of religion"): [53]
Anno 1650 at the conclusion of Peace there [in Nuremberg] all the high potentates had had their portraits painted life-size by our Herr von Sandrart, some on horseback, some in other forms after their high dignities and he Preissler had seen the advantage of this kind of Painting, and he finally, by portraying the King of Sweden [Carl X Gustav; 1622, king 1654-1660], the Duke of Amalfi [Ottavio Piccolomini, 1599-1656] and many other potentates, had progressed so far that afterwards he took on other and better manners and thus rose conspicuously upwards so that he served the high and the lowly most industriously with his fine and life-like portraits, so that he was also summoned to some Princes in the surroundings hereabouts. [54]
Daniel Preisler became the progenitor of a Nuremberg family of painters that was active for many generations, and his son Johann Daniel (1666-1737) became director of the Nuremberg Academy. Matthias Merian the Younger, who was trained by Sandrart and had escaped from "hungry peasants" in Frankfurt only by the skin of his teeth, was also in Nuremberg.
As he then attended on His Excellency Field Marshall Wrangel [1613-1676] with his Art, both in the field and in Nuremberg Anno 1650 at the meeting for the execution of the Peace; he also portrayed the Royal and Imperial Swedish and French highest officers of War, along with the greater part of the colonels, life-size and in the best perfection, in a very lifelike fashion and a very short time, for which he received an honorarium of five thousand Reichsthaler. [55]
The sculptor and wax-prankster Georg Pfründt (1603-1663) was also attracted by commissions; Sandrart reports his fate in the Thirty Years War:
In the subsequent spreading unrest of War he went into War service among the army of Duke Bernhard of Weimar etc. [1604-1639] and had stabling of 2 or 3 horses, but afterwards he was captured in the Battle of Nördlingen [1634] and the defeat of the Swedish, but after some time was set free after suffering much misery and being in danger of death, and came to his previous master Duke Bernhard and also served the same in the persisting siege of Breysach [1638] and was especially dear and pleasant." [56] After a stay in Paris, Pfründt "came back to Germany and Nuremberg, where the Convention for execution of the Peace was continuing, and from there, after completing much fine work, and the death of his wife, he proceeded [57] to the Diet in Regenspurg and the subsequent Coronation". [58]
Sandrart also went to the Diet in Regensburg in 1653, where he was raised to the nobility by Ferdinand II (1608; emperor 1637-1657) and his coat of arms was upgraded. From spring 1654 he spent most of his time in Stockau, going away in subsequent years only to take up commissions from outside the area. In 1670 Sandrart sold his country estate to the Elector of Bavaria's privy councillor Franz von Mayr - who had been the Elector's ambassador at the Diet of Regensburg - "finally, because he had no hope of heirs of his own flesh" [59] and moved to Augsburg. Here too he collected news of artists and was able to report as follows about Matthäus Gundelach (1566-1653/54) and his activities in Augsburg:
And so Gondolach settled in Augsburg and completed many fine works ... there, and would also doubtless have revealed more of his virtue and excellent knowledge if it were not that partly the sad condition of these times and partly his own already ripe age had not cut him off from longer life and further work." [60 ]
After the death of Sandrart's first wife in Augsburg in 1672 he married Esther Barbara Blomert, born in 1651, a year later in St. Lorenz's church in Nuremberg. Early in 1674 Sandrart moved to Nuremberg, where he directed building operations for the Protestant-Reformed congregation in Stein.
Here in Nuremberg his literary work, for which he had long been compiling the material, appeared in rapid sequence. Sandrart does not always cover the effects of the war on the individual artists' biographies in his work. Thus it is not mentioned in the "Teutsche Academie" that Johann Schönfeld's return to Germany after 18 years in Italy coincided strikingly with the Peace of Westphalia. But Sandrart does report on the happy return of Carolo Screta, who had been driven from Prague; he came to Rome via Bologna and Florence in 1634: There, he
perfected himself there by industriousness and hard work to such an extent that he deemed himself rich enough to return to his fatherland of Prague and there to shake out the abundance of his cornucopia. When he had been welcomed there by his relatives and lovers of Art he found that the noble art of Painting was stuck in a deep mire of the most profound contempt and had as it were been expelled from the city, and for this reason he made his best efforts to raise it again by excellent works of Art, and to wash off the dirt from its face, and he then put it back in its previous place and caused it to flourish and made himself popular and honoured through his fine qualities, friendliness and praiseworthy change of virtue among people of high and low estate. [61]
When listing the works of Jacques Callot (1592-1635) Sandrart picks out the "wondrous little book called Le misere della Guerre, a most well-devised work of the misery, wretchedness and perils of war (much thought upon by many people)". [62] But Sandrart omits the Augsburg etcher Johann Ulrich Franck (1603-1675), and thus the reader of the Teutsche Academie is not informed about his impressive graphic cycle on the atrocities and horrors of the Thirty Years War, created between 1643 and 1656. But we do read about painter Jacob Ernst Thoman von Hagelstein's (1588-1653) "change of profession" which was brought about by the war: he
took up the excellent Art of Painting for the first time in Costanz and Kempten .... Now when Germany was overwhelmed by war he went into the martial service of His Imperial Majesty and was for many years Imperial Commissar and Quartermaster, for which time, as can easily be understood, he must cast aside the Art of Painting. [63]
And Wallerant Vaillant (1623-1677) "also found himself with the Electoral Palatinate. But the unrest of War in those lands caused him to go to Amsterdam." [64] Sandrart reports briefly but impressively on the war experiences ("endured much") of Leonhard Kern (1588-1662). [65] Kern "was born in a place in the Ottenwald and spent a long time in Italy, and practised both the Art of Sculpture, in which it is well known that he excelled, and also architecture, but afterwards endured much in Germany during the unrest of War." [66] Perhaps Kern's own war experiences explain the extraordinary sculpture Szene aus dem Dreissigjährigen Krieg (Scene from the Thirty Years War): it is very rare to see this theme treated by sculptors, though it was frequently a subject for painters and draughtsmen. This small alabaster sculpture in the Kunsthistorische Sammlungen in Vienna (inv. no. 4363) is mentioned as early as 1659 in the inventory of Archduke Leopold of Austria: "A naked woman, being stabbed from behind by a soldier with a rapier." [67]
2. Ludwig Grote writes in his foreword to the 1962 Nuremberg exhib. cat., p. 6: "generally speaking German art was at a low ebb in the 17th century" and Wolfgang J. Müller in his introduction to the 1966 Berlin exhib. cat., p. 9: "Between the great age of Holbein, Dürer and their successors, and the 18th century, which spread the artistic riches of the late Baroque period over Germany, the 17th century thrusts itself like a desert in which a scattered and feeble artistic life could survive in only a few places [. . .]."
3. Sandrart 1994, Lebenslauf, p. 3.
4. With a survey of Lengger's research in 1996, pp. 226-237.
5. Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nuremberg, archive: Reichstatdt Nürnberg XII no. 44, Bl. 3 [r]; the whole extensive manuscript is printed in Tacke 1998.
6. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Kulturkabinett, Kupferstichkabinett: inv. no. KdZ 9950; for the drawing see cat. Berlin 1921, p. 248 no. 9950; for Petel see Feuchtmayr/Schädler 1973, p. 130 ff.; for the reaction to "Quattor Mori" see cat. Nuremberg 1997, pp 78-82.
7. Kunsthaus Zürich, Graphische Sammlung: inv. no. Mappe N 16, Blatt 19; for the drawing and the artist see Riether 1995, p. 196 no. 210. I should like to thank the author most sincerely for allowing me to read his as yet unpublished dissertation.
8. Riether 1995, p. 31 and p. 502; see also Riether 1991.
9. See Sandrart 1994, vol. II, p. 339.
10. Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nuremberg, Gemäldegalerie: inv. no. Gm. 590; for the picture see cat. Nuremberg 1995, pp. 111-113; for the artist see Gatenbröcker 1996.
11. For this see my future contribution to the conference volume for the international congress in Osnabrück 1998 "Der Frieden - Rekonstruktion einer europäischen Vision".
12. Nationalmuseum Gdansk, inv. no. MNG/SD/391/R.
13. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Kupferstichkabinett: inv. no. KdZ 10441.
14. Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Graphische Sammlung: inv. no. C 24/3.
15. Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nuremberg, Graphische Sammlung: inv. no. Hz. 168.
16. Redenbacher 1974/75, p. 312.
17. Sandrart 1994, Lebenslauf, p. 4.
18. Sandrart 1994, II, p. 229.
19. Sandrart 1994, II, p. 319.
20. Sandrart 1994, II, p. 307.
21. Sandrart 1994, II, p. 307
22. Cf. Sandrart 1994, II, p. 297 and II, p. 310.
23. Sandrart 1994, II p. 297.
24. See Tacke 1998, whose detailed genealogies are due to Friedrich von Hagen (Nuremberg); see also with additional literature, cat. Nuremberg 1995, pp. 129-137.
25. See Tacke 1998, whose detailed genealogies are due to Friedrich von Hagen (Nuremberg); Gerszi 1990 and Cat. Nuremberg 1995, pp. 267-269.
26. See Mende 1979, pp. 88-95.
27. Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nuremberg, Gemäldegalerie, inv. no. Gm 1615; for the picture see Tacke 1996a.
28. Cf. note 5.
29. Tacke 1995.
30. Tacke 1996b.
31. Aubin 1940, p. 153; with further literature on Viatis see cat. Nuremberg 1995, pp. 95-97 and pp. 279-299.
32. See exhib. cat. Nuremberg 1994; Praun 1994.
33. Sandrart 1994, Lebenslauf, p. 5.
34. Sandrart 1994, II, p. 327.
35. Sandrart 1994, II, p. 363.
36. Sandrart 1994, III, p. 79.
37. Sandrart 1994, Lebenslauf, p. 5.
38. Sandrart 1994, Lebenslauf, p. 5.
39. Sandrart 1994, II, p. 358.
40. Sandrart 1994, Lebenslauf, p. 12.
41. Velden 1908.
42. See Klemm 1986, pp. 94-99 nos. 33-34.
43. Sandrart 1994, Lebenslauf p. 12.
44. Cf. Klemm 1986, pp. 94-99, nos. 33-34.
45. Sandrart 1994, Lebenslauf p. 13.
46. For Stockau see Striedinger 1895.
47. Sandrart 1994, Lebenslauf, p. 17 and Klemm 1986, p. 340.
48. Sandrart 1994, II, p. 309; for the paintings see Klemm 1986, p. 146 ff.no. 61 (for Elector Maximilian I) and pp. 153-159 nos. 65-66 (for Würzburg Cathedral).
49. Sandrart 1994, Lebenslauf, p. 13; after the estate was destroyed by the French in 1647 Duke Wolfgang Wilhelem renounced his right of repurchase and declared Stockau a freehold estate.
50. Carl Gustav von Pfalz-Zweibrücken (1662-1660), King of Sweden designate; cf. Klemm 1986, p. 178.
51. Sandrart 1994, Lebenslauf p. 18.
52. Sandrart 1994, Lebenslauf p. 18; for the commissions see Klemm 1986, pp. 177-194.
53. Sturm 1863, p. 364.
54. Sandrart 1994, III p. 79 ff.
55. Sandrart 1994, II p. 324 ff.
56. Sandrart 1994, II p. 344.
57. Leopold I, the second son of Ferdinand III, became the sole heir of the eastern Habsburg estates as a result of the sudden death of his brother Ferdinand IV (1633-1654), and was elected emperor in Frankfurt on 1.8.1658.
58. Sandrart 1994, II, p. 344; cf. Theuerkauff 1974, p. 64 ff.
59. Sandrart 1994, Lebenslauf p. 13.
60. Sandrart 1994, II, p. 322.
61. Sandrart 1994, II, p. 327.
62. Sandrart 1994, II, p. 370.
63. Sandrart 1994, II, p. 296.
64. Sandrart 1994, II, p. 374.
65. For Kern see, with guiding bibliography, Riether 1995a.
66. Sandrart 1994, II, p. 343.
67. The inventory entry quotes from exhib. cat. Schwäbisch-Hall 1988, p. 223.