Albrecht Balthasar Augustin
(b Berg, nr Starnberg, Bavaria, 3 Jan 1687; d Munich, 15 Aug 1765).
German painter and administrator. He was the son of Augustin
Albrecht, a carpenter, and he was probably taught in Munich by his
uncle, the painter Benedikt Albrecht (d 1730), before he went to
Italy, where he is thought to have stayed in Rome and Venice.
Albrecht returned to Munich in 1719 and executed his first works
(all 1723–4) for the former Hofmarkkirche (now Katholische
Pfarrkirche; in situ) in Schönbrunn, near Dachau. These were a
ceiling fresco, Celebration of the Cross, and three altar panels,
Mourning Angel (high altar), Martyrdom of St Catherine (left altar)
and St Anne (right altar). He also painted two altar panels, St John
of Nepomuk and St Leonard (both 1724–5; untraced), for the
Katholische Pfarrkirche Mariahilf in der Au in Munich. Unlike Cosmas
Damian Asam, Matthäus Günther and Johann Baptist Bergmüller, he was
influenced by 16th-century Venetian and Roman models, and both in
these works and in later ones he continued to look to the past for
inspiration. Between 1727 and 1732 he was nominated court painter to
the Elector Charles of Bavaria (reg 1726–45), although he had only a
small workshop and few apprentices, the best-known being Franz Ignaz
Öfele (1721–97). In 1738 Albrecht painted one of his principal
works, the Assumption of the Virgin for the
Augustiner-Chorherrenstift in Diessen (in situ). This was a kind of
‘curtain’ for the theatrum sacrum and seems to be influenced by the
stage-altar (1719–22) of the same subject by Egid Quirin Asam in the
Klosterkirche Mariae Himmelfahrt in Rohr. In 1746 Albrecht was put
in charge of gallery inspection and restoration for the Bavarian
castles and drew up inventories of the paintings. As a result of
these activities he produced few works of his own between 1746 and
1759, one being the important Assumption of the Virgin (1755–6; in
situ) for the Klosterkirche SS Dionys und Juliana in Schäftlarn,
again influenced by 16th-century Italian art. Albrecht’s religious
paintings often have a dramatic diagonal composition, and they are
far removed from any feeling of playful Rococo brilliance. His few
secular pieces (e.g. Children Playing Dice, 1731–2; Munich, Alte
Pin.) show a link with French academic painting, and the few
surviving drawings relate mainly to preliminary work for his altar
panels. His stairwell fresco of 1724–5 at Schloss Dachau has been
destroyed, as have his frescoes of 1732–4 in the chapel and on the
ceiling of the Green Gallery at the Residenz in Munich; the Miracle
frescoes in the Pfarr-und Wallfahrtskirche Mariae Himmelfahrt in
Aufkirchen were painted over in 1900.
