History of Art: Baroque and Rococo

Baroque and Rococo

Carlo Innocenzo Carlone

Johann Michael Rottmayr

Cosmas Damian Asam

Franz Anton Maulbertsch

The Great Fresco Painters

As sumptuously decorated reception rooms grew in popularity, frescos assumed a dominant role, gradually covering virtually all of the wall spaces, as well as the ceilings. Artists who specialized in painting frescos formed workshops making it common practice for each member to concentrate on a particular skill. While the master of a workshop usually specialized in painting figures; his assistant would concentrate on the painting of trompe loeils or feigned architectural details (inquadratura), which often formed the frames of frescos, while other assistants would specialize in the painting of flowers or still lifes. Some workshops would effectively travel around between spring and autumn, working successively in capital cities throughout Europe. Typical was the well-established team headed by Carlo Innocenzo Carlone (1686-1775), which was in great demand in Italy. The Carlone workshop painted series of frescos in the cathedrals of Asti and Monza, in palaces in Brescia, Bergamo, and Como, as well as in churches and palaces across Austria. Germanv, Poland, and Switzerland. Most notable were the decorations in Augustus Castle in Brtihl, Ludwigsburg Castle, and the Belvedere in Vienna, where the frescos comprised enchanting mythological scenes and allegories celebrating the life of Prince Eugene. Carlones style was very explicitly Rococo, both in his drawing technique, brimming with vivacity, and also in his use of subtle pastel hues, without the strong effects of chiaroscuro. Carlone produced many easel paintings, which were also executed in a similar style; he had considerable influence on Austrian and German painters, who usually sought inspiration from the Venetian masters, as did Carlone himself. Hence, the artistic atmosphere in Italy shared similar traits with that of neighbouring countries, as illustrated by the work of such artists as Johann Michael Rottmayr (1654— 1730) who also worked in Prague; Cosmas Damian Asam (1686-1750). who belonged to a great dynasty of German painters; and Franz Anton Maulpertsch (1724-96). Towering above his contemporaries in artistic stature was Giambattista Tiepolo who was revered for his expressive ingenuity and the virtuosity of his brushwork.

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Carlo Innocenzo Carlone

(1686 - 1775)

Carlo Innocenzo Carlone
Allegorie

1730

Carlo Innocenzo Carlone
The glorification of Magrave Carl Wilhelm Friedrich von Ansbach
1734

Carlo Innocenzo Carlone
The Holy Trinity with angels

Carlo Innocenzo Carlone
The Triumph of Reason
detail from the celling fresco in the drawing room of Villa Lechi,
Montirone, Brescia Italy, 1745-46

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Johann Michael Rottmayr
Auferstehung Christi
1691

Johann Michael Rottmayr
(b Laufen, bapt 11 Dec 1654; d Vienna, 25 Oct 1730).

Austrian painter and draughtsman. He is most notable for large-scale religious and secular decorative schemes, and his career heralded the important 18th-century German contribution to late Baroque and Rococo fresco painting. He was probably taught by his mother, who was a painter of wooden sculpture. Between 1675 and 1687–8 he was in Venice as a pupil and assistant of the Munich artist Johann Carl Loth, whose studio attracted many painters from Austria and southern Germany. It is possible that Rottmayr also visited other Italian cities, in particular Bologna and Rome. He returned to Salzburg in the late 1680s a mature painter and immediately received commissions for panels and frescoes. In 1689 he painted mythological scenes for the Karabinierisaal at the Residenz in Salzburg (in situ); in composition and style these are close to high Baroque models, particularly the work of Pietro da Cortona and Peter Paul Rubens. Such models, as well as the example of Loth, and Venetian painting, had an important influence on Rottmayr’s panel paintings of this period, for example the Sacrifice of Iphigenia (c. 1691; Vienna, Belvedere) or St Agnes (1693–5) and St Sebastian (1694; both Passau, Cathedral). In these, the solidity of the figures is emphasized through the use of intense colours. For Rottmayr, however, the rational development of the figures and the composition was less important than the overall effect achieved by the use of colour. Incorrect details of anatomy and perspective found compensation in greater expressiveness, mainly conveyed by gesture and pose. Rottmayr’s images are filled with plastic elements, creating a staccato effect. Several very important early commissions paved the way for Rottmayr’s move to Vienna in the late 1690s. In the allegorical frescoes (1695) at Schloss Frain an der Thaya (now Vranov nad Dyjí, Czech Republic) Rottmayr’s talent for accommodating architecture within decoration is evident. Rottmayr acknowledged the basic architectural design in the division of his scenes, with the central scene (an illusionistic view into the heavens) coinciding with the central cupola, a system based on Pietro da Cortona’s frescoes at the Palazzo Barberini in Rome. In spite of the weight and solidity of the figures, the use of lighter, harmonious colour achieves a transition to immateriality. This corresponds with the allegorical allusions to the virtues of the Althan family, from whom Rottmayr received this commission.

Johann Michael Rottmayr
Allegorie der Astronomie

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Cosmas Damian Asam
(b Benediktbeuren, bapt 28 Sept 1686; d Munich, 10 May 1739).

Painter and architect, son of Hans Georg Asam. As a youth, he worked as his father’s assistant, for example at Schloss Schönach (1704) and at the Maria-Hilf-Kirche (1708), Freystadt. After his father’s death in 1711, Cosmas Damian went to Rome, studying at the Accademia di S Luca under Carlo Maratti; he was awarded the academy’s first prize for his brush drawing of the Miracle of St Pius (Rome, Accad. N. S Luca) in 1713. That year he returned to Germany. In 1717 he married Maria Anna, daughter of the engraver Franz Anton Morl (1671–1734); their son, Franz Erasmus Asam (1720–95), produced few works of his own, acting mainly as an assistant to his father. In 1724 Cosmas Damian bought an estate he named Asamisch-Maria-Einsiedel-Thal in Munich-Thalkirchen, even building a chapel of his own there in 1739. Throughout his life Cosmas Damian worked mainly on large commissions, painting and sometimes also acting as architect, sometimes collaborating with his brother Egid Quirin; his work took him to the Upper Palatinate, Upper and Lower Bavaria, Baden and Swabia as well as to the Tyrol, Switzerland, Bohemia and Silesia. Besides church dignitaries, his patrons included the court and the aristocracy. He was given the protection of the Elector’s court in Munich in 1719 and subsequently some minor offices at various other courts. On large-scale commissions he always employed workshop assistants as well as members of his family. His pupils included Thomas Christian Scheffler (1699–1756), Matthaus Günther, Joseph Gregor Winck, Johann Adam Schopf (1702–72) and Johann Adam Muller ( fl 1718–38).

Cosmas Damian Asam
Pentecost
after 1720
Fresco
Abbey Church, Aldersbach

Cosmas Damian Asam
Assumption of Mary
1716
Fresco
Benedictine Abbey, Weltenburg

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Franz Anton Maulbertsch
(b Langenargen am Bodensee, 7 June 1724; d Vienna, 7 Aug 1796).

Austrian painter. His work as a painter of both oil paintings and frescoes on religious, mythological and occasionally worldly themes spanned the second half of the 18th century, adapting a Late Baroque training to the onset of Neo-classicism but remaining strikingly individual throughout. His fresco work, mostly still in situ in widespread central European locations, came at the end of an artistic tradition and was for long neglected, being far from major cultural centres; but it is now seen to establish him as one of the leading painters of his century and a colourist comparable to Giambattista Tiepolo.

Franz Anton Maulbertsch
Christ and Godfather
1758
Ceiling fresco
Parish Church, Sümeg

Franz Anton Maulbertsch
Adoration of the Shepherds
1758
Fresco
Parish Church, Sumeg

Franz Anton Maulbertsch
Crucifixion
1758
Fresco
Parish Church, Sumeg

Franz Anton Maulbertsch
Visitation (Meeting of Mary and Elisabeth)
1771-77
Fresco
Cathedral, Vac

Franz Anton Maulbertsch
Ceiling decoration
1782
Fresco
Episcopal Palace, Szombathely