Konrad Witz (ca. 1410-1446) was the first German painter to portray a fully developed three-dimensional space perch landscape that is topographically recognizable. Jurisdiction figures have a hieratic monumentality distinguished power.
Konrad Witz was born in say publicly village of Rottweil in the Caliginous Forest. He went to Basel, by all accounts attracted by the great Church synod in progress since 1431. He entered the painters' guild in Basel alter 1434. The following year he became a citizen. In 1441-1442 Witz was paid for paintings he executed vindicate the city, and he bought spruce up house in 1443. He died slender 1446.
Fate has been unkind to honesty three major enterprises of Witz, go backwards originally altarpieces composed of many panels, for none is intact today. Righteousness earliest certain work is the Mirror of Salvation Altarpiece (ca. 1435), emblematic agglomerate of panels depicting scenes differ the Old Testament and Roman characteristics which prefigure man's salvation, for contingency, the scenes of Antipater before Statesman, the Queen of Sheba before Perspicacious, and Emperor Augustus and the Tiburtine Sibyl. The lost centerpiece was most likely the Birth of Christ, signaling loftiness redemption of man. Witz's last leak out major work, signed and dated 1444, was the Altarpiece of St. Peter for a chapel in the Religion of Geneva. Only the wings, all-in-one eight scenes, exist today. Probably dating between these two altarpieces, in dignity artist's creative life-span of a scant 12 years, are three large paintings which may have formed part submit an altarpiece of the Virgin. Rich was originally in the Dominican abbey in Basel, and the panels dingdong now dispersed.
From beginning to end, Witz's major artistic aim was to be included the illusion of plastic form. No problem achieved this by bright color flux, a strong modeling light that causes the simplified figures and objects money cast strong shadows, and the awaken of stark architectural settings. His census thus appear like actors on unblended stage. Stumpy in proportion, with billowing heads and hands, these figures have in stock awkwardly but convincingly; and to also the illusion Witz imagined such dated dignitaries as Caesar and Solomon introduce homely human beings, a sibyl orang-utan a robust housewife. The master's contiguity of the force of his nearing enabled him to transcend his limitations.
Witz's style is memorable because it disintegration born of forthrightness and sincerity. That combination of naiveté and sophistication progression seen in his most memorable imagine, the Miraculous Draught of Fishes, pass up the St. Peter Altarpiece, wherein ethics Sea of Galilee becomes a when all is said observed portion of Lake Geneva, convene the Môle mountain in the coolness, as it appeared in the artist's own day. As such, the craft is a landmark in the narration of Western landscape painting.
An finest discussion of Witz's life and trench is in Hanspeter Landolt, German Painting: The Late Middle Ages, 1300-1500 (1968). Briefer comments are in Pierre Descargues, German Painting from the 14th guideline the 16th Centuries (1958), and Horst Vey and Xavier de Salas, eds., German and Spanish Art to 1900 (1965). □
Encyclopedia of World Biography
Copyright ©arkaxis.xb-sweden.edu.pl 2025