Joachim von Sandrart
The painter and art writer Joachim von Sandrart (1606–1688) was an exceedingly versatile, gifted, productive and, thanks to the ramified trade connections of his family, cosmopolitan personality. As the son of a wealthy Calvinist family originating from Wallonia who had to flee the catholic Habsburg family from Valenciennes in 1602, Sandrart was born on May 21, 1606 in Frankfurt am Main. The influence, international connections and wealth of his clcose family allowed him to pursue a extensive artistic education under the best-known teachers in Europe. He received his first artistic stimuli under Sebastian Stoskopff in Frankfurt, learned the trade of graphical arts under Aegidius Sadeler in Prague and continued from there to Utrecht, where he started working in Gerrit van Honthorst’s studio in 1625. One highlight of his first period in the Netherlands was when he met Peter Paul Rubens.
The close connections between Utrecht and Rome, Sandrart’s meeting with Rubens and his desire to study ancient architecture and sculpture helped Sandrart make the decision to set off on a journey to Italy with his cousin and mentor, Michel le Blon, in 1629. On the journey there, they stopped in Venice, where they met Johann Liss. In the same year, they travelled via Bologna to Rome, where the Middle Baroque art scene was celebrating its first triumphs with Pietro da Cortona and Gianlorenzo Bernini. He acquired the new style of the baroque, which was focussed on classical ideals, by following Domenichino’s example. In addition, he associated with Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin, did drawings with Andrea Sacchi and Pietro Testa and made contact with the Schildersbent. A journey to Naples, Malta and Messina led him to Ribera, Artimisia Gentileschi and Stanzione as well as to Caravaggio’s monumental Beheading of St John the Baptist. From 1632 onwards, he lived in the Palazzo Giustiniani, evidently as the curator of its collection of paintings primarily and as the organiser of the “Galleria Giustiniani”, a comprehensive set of copper engravings copied from antiquities, for which he, Theodor Matham and Cornelis Bloemaert delivered the templates.
In early 1635, Sandrart left Rome and travelled via Basle to Frankfurt, which at that time was experiencing the devastation of the Thirty Years’ War. During his two-year stay there, he produced primarily portraits, including the Portrait of Johann Maximilian The Younger, but also the pudica Moonscape with Cupid and Venus, which was inspired by Elsheimer. In 1637, he married Johanna Milkau, daughter of a rich banker who owned the Stockau estate near Augsburg. In the same year, he left Frankfurt and moved to Amsterdam with his wife. As the most important intermediary in social matters it was once again Le Blon who facilitated his access to the Amsterdam patriciate and thus to his first picture commissions. The Portrait of the Prince-Elector Maximilian of Bavaria led to a commission for twelve labours of the months for the Schleissheim Palace in 1642. Before returning to Germany, he travelled to Antwerp in 1645, where Rubens’ altarpieces made a long-lasting artistic impression on him. In the same year, his father-in-law died and left Sandrart and his wife the stately residence in Stockau, their new home as of 1645. The next few years were dominated by the rebuilding of the property and its management, which was often difficult, as wells as by numerous significant commissions for church altars, for example for Wurzburg cathedral (1646), Bamberg cathedral (1651), St. Stephan’s Cathedral in Vienna (1653) and Lambach Minster, where the extensive decorations kept him busy until 1661.
On the occasion of the banquet in Nuremberg on September 25, 1649 with Count Palatine Charles Gustav of Sweden and the Imperial States, he painted the Peace Banquet as his first significant official commission. In 1653, he was ennobled and made a member of the Palatinate-Neuburg Council; in the years that followed, he produced in Vienna the portraits of Emperor Ferdinand III., the Roman king Ferdinand IV. and Archduke Leopold, which also brought him the Austrian peerage. The final important honour was his admittance to the Fruitbearing Society in 1676.
From the mid 1660s, Sandrart devoted himself increasingly to his work as an art theorist and teacher. He played an important role in the founding of the academies of art in Nuremberg (1662) and Augsburg (1670). Against the background of his great wealth of artistic experience, he began to write the Teutsche Academie with the help of the poet and publicist Sigmund von Birken in 1668; this work was published in three volumes between 1675 and 1680 in Nuremberg. Thus, he created a book of both imposing and vivid scope, which radiated out into the entire empire and set new benchmarks among artists and their critics.
Nicole Hartje-Grave