Benutzerspezifische Werkzeuge

Fellows und Mitarbeitende des ZI sowie Gastwissenschaftlerinnen und Gastwissenschaftler berichten über laufende Arbeiten. Die offene Form des Workshops ermöglicht eine intensive Diskussion.

Adam Elsheimer (1578-1610), the German painter who spent the last ten years of his short career in Rome, is widely regarded as a seminal artist of European Baroque. His lyrical night pieces and atmospheric landscapes, as well as his ability to condense epic drama and monumental figures into small, jewel-like paintings on copper, were praised by contemporaries, earning him the admiring epithet ‘devil of the small things’.

Tico Seifert will briefly introduce his exhibition and book project, celebrating the superb collection of Elsheimer’s works at the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS). One focus of the exhibition will be Elsheimer’s painting Il Contento, a subject taken from a Spanish picaresque novel, Guzmán de Alfarache, by Mateo Alemán (1599) and never before depicted in art. The painting was possibly commissioned by Cardinal Odoardo Farnese. Uniquely for Elsheimer, several preparatory drawings survive, allowing us to follow how Elsheimer developed this unusual theme. The painting was unfinished when Elsheimer died in 1610 and was subsequently completed and selectively reworked by an unidentified artist. A drawing attributed to Johann König is crucial for the assessment of Il Contento's unfinished state, while a copy by Nicolaus Knüpfer (Alte Pinakothek, Munich) provides further clues as to subsequent interventions.

[Caption: Adam Elsheimer, ‘Il Contento’, c.1607, oil on copper, 30 x 42 cm, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh (Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the National Gallery of Scotland, 1970, inv. NG 2312).]