Johann Michael Rottmayr

Michael Rottmayr ( baptized December 11, 1654 in Laufen an der Salzach, † October 25, 1730 in Vienna ) was a Salzburg Baroque painter. He is next to Martino Altomonte as the first native of Central Europe masters of the style in today's Austria.

Life

Michael Rottmayr was the son of the organist Friedrich Rottmayr and his wife Margareta Magdalena. With his mother he learned probably the painter's trade, and went in 1675 to Venice, where he was a pupil of Johann Carl Loth. This gave him a Venetian- style Neapolitan mixing. 1688 he returned via Passau and 1689 in Salzburg detectable, where he became court painter fürstbischöflicher. Also for the Count Althan he worked.

In his first marriage he was married from 1690 to the Salzburg- Helene Barbara Reichpekh. 1696 moved Rottmayr from Salzburg to Vienna, where he worked until his death. He received in 1704 the nobility of Rosenbrunn. Since 1727 he was married to his second wife Theresia Josefa Nassner. After his death Rottmayr was buried in St. Stephen's Cathedral.

Honors

1894 Rottmayrgasse facility in Vienna was named after the painter and in 1935 the same street in Salzburg-Süd. Named after him today are also the Rottmayrstraße and Rottmayr High School in his native country skiing ( Upper Bavaria) at the river Salzach.

Importance

Michael Rottmayr was the most respected, busiest and arguably most important painter of the early Baroque in Austria today. He mainly worked in Salzburg, Vienna and Lower Austria monasteries. Rottmayr was increasingly influenced by Peter Paul Rubens and appreciated by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach. His frescoes are characterized by expressive Erlebnishaftigkeit and a clear conception of space. In his late work, the color scale is always brighter and cooler.

Works

There are also numerous altarpieces, as in Holy Cross or Melk.

A ceiling fresco in the Schönbrunn Palace from the 1710s years, which is considered one of his masterpieces, was lost during the reconstruction of the castle in the 1740s.