A Group of Unknown Drawings by Matthäus Gänther for Some of His Main Works
1947; College Art Association; Volume: 29; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/00043079.1947.11408451
ISSN1559-6478
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Influence and Diplomacy
ResumoDrawings of the great South German and Austrian fresco painters of the Baroque have, as a rule, not travelled very far. As those artists were first of all religious painters, and their works adorn churches, abbeys, and monasteries, the contents of their studios, such as sketches and projects went, after their death mostly into the libraries and print collections of the big monasteries. Nowadays, the largest and most comprehensive assemblies are concentrated in the Albertina in Vienna and in the Graphische Sammlung in Munich. These most representative collections were mainly built up from former ecclesiastic property. In spite of the collecting activity of the museums of Central Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many of those drawings still remain in their quiet ecclesiastic hiding places, as art commerce did not search for them so eagerly as for the works of the earlier periods. Collector's taste in Central and Eastern Europe, however, did not neglect them. Many splendid examples can be found in loving private hands. For instance, large stocks of drawings and sketches of the two most important Austrian painters of the eighteenth century, Franz Anton Maulbertsch and Martin Johann Schmidt, travelled to Poland and Russia, probably during the artists' lifetimes, quite as with Tiepolo, who sold “books” filled with drawings to foreign amateurs. Men of intelligence and cultivated taste appreciated those intimate products of the creative phantasy of the great ecclesiastic decorators. Nevertheless, very little of their work in drawings penetrated beyond the aforementioned circle.
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