HEISS, JOHANN
1640 Memmingen - 1704 Augsburg


Title: The Painting Academy.
Painters draw a male model in the nude room.
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Mounting: Relined.
Measurement: 108 x 8.,5cm.
Frame: Framed.
Cf. literature:
W. Meighörner (ed.), Johann Heiß. Swabian Master of Baroque Splendour, Friedrichshafen 2002, pp. 126-136.

Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany.

We are grateful to Gode Krämer, Augsburg, for confirming the attribution of the present painting on the basis of a high-resolution digital photograph.

Johann Heiss comes from Memmingen, where he also lives for the most part. At the same time, he has a second centre of life in Augsburg, where he finds a more artistically and religiously open environment. From 1670, Joachim von Sandrart (1606 - 1688) founded one of the first private art academies in Augsburg. In the second half of the 1670s, the painter and scholar also writes the first art theory treatise in German. In this environment, Johann Heiss, who himself is not bound to a guild, addresses the issue of the emancipation of artists. The new self-image allows for the artist's role separate from that of the craftsman. The academy as a place of education is a manifestation of this. Heiss's paintings betray the postulates of the classicist theories that were fashionable at the time, such as the superiority of classical antiquity. Although a nude model stands in the centre of the room, behind him we see a Venus and a cast or copy of Hercules Farnese, alluding to the superiority and invincibility of culture over nature.
From the 1670s onwards, Johann Heiss creates a series of works depicting students at work in the Academy Hall. At least two paintings with the present motif are known (Westfälisches Landesmuseum, Münster; art trade). These are related to (at least) four very similar depictions by Heiss, but with female models (Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, dated 1687; Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig; Münster, Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte; private collection).