Tico Seifert // Adam Elsheimer – Devil in the Detail
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’.
My project comprises of an exhibition and a book. The exhibition will celebrate the superb collection of Elsheimer’s works at the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS), arguably second only to the holdings at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt. My research carried out at the ZI will benefit both, the publication as well as the exhibition, and will gravitate around Elsheimer’s ‘Il Contento’, a subject taken from a Spanish picaresque novel, Guzmán de Alfarache, by Mateo Alemán (1599) and never before depicted. The painting was possibly commissioned by a member of the Farnese family. Uniquely for Elsheimer, several preparatory drawings survive – one at NGS – allowing us to follow how Elsheimer developed this unusual theme. The painting was unfinished when Elsheimer died and subsequently completed by an unidentified artist. A drawing attributed to Johann König (also at NGS), shows it in its unfinished state. Elsheimer’s painting is at the centre of a small group of works by other artists in the North, including one by Nicolaus Knüpfer (Alte Pinakothek, Munich).
We envisage the exhibition to coincide with the publication of my book on Elsheimer, currently anticipated for late 2026/early 2027.
[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).]