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Lot Essay
This brilliantly finished painting on copper combines Johann Rottenhammer's interest in visual narrative with his Italian sensitivity to colour and composition. The artist has taken as his subject that moment on the Road to Calvary when, as Jesus stumbles under the weight of his cross, Simon of Cyrene is seized and '...on him they laid the cross, that he might bear it after Jesus'. The women 'who also bewailed and lamented him' are prominent in the foreground and, in the middle distance, a procession of figures leaving the gates of Jerusalem are already ascending Calvary, led by the two others, who would be crucified alongside Jesus (Luke 23:26-34).
Johann Rottenhammer was Bavarian by birth, the son of a minor court official. His father's connections enabled him to be apprenticed to the court painter, Hans Donauer the Elder, with whom he was to remain for five or six years. Perhaps in search of a wider training, but more probably in pursuit of lucrative commissions, Rottenhammer moved to Italy in 1589. Venice was the obvious first port-of-call, given the long cultural and economic associations the city had enjoyed with Germany. There had been constant movement between Venice and the North throughout the 16th century: Lotto, Titian and Tintoretto had all employed northern painters in workshops and Titian had twice visited the Imperial Court at Augsburg. Without doubt, the most celebrated example of German art in Venice was Dürer's Feast of the Rose Garlands painted in 1506, which had been commissioned by the Scuola dei Tedeschi, a confraternity of ex-patriot Germans, for their chapel in S. Bartolomeo di Rialto, the church at the heart of the German community in Venice and the area to which the young Rottenhammer would have been drawn.
Rottenhammer remained in Venice, however, for the shortest period, moving to Rome in 1591, where according to Ridolfi (Carlo Ridolfi, Meraviglie dell'arte, Venice, 1648, vol. II, p. 76), he collaborated with his fellow northerners, Paulus Bril and Jan Brueghel I. The collaborations continued after Rottenhammer returned to Venice in 1595 and resulted in joint commissions from important patrons, such as Cardinal Federico Borromeo (resident in Rome, 1586-1601). Rottenhammer's mature style was fully developed during his second, and altogether more prolific Venetian period. This was in response to the influence of the city's leading painters, notably Paolo Veronese. Rottenhammer's success at this time is evident from the patronage he received from local collectors and foreign residents, such as Jan Reynst and later by the Gonzagas in Mantua (Vincenzo I Gonzaga was in Venice in 1600). From 1606 until his death, Rottenhammer worked in Germany, where his studio flourished and his Italianate, specifically Venetian style, found a ready market.
The present painting, however, must date from the artist's Roman years - 1591-95. Apart from the glowing colours and the Lottesque treatment of the head of Simon of Cyrene, there is little to suggest the influence of Venetian painting. Instead, Rottenhammer reverts to a style more closely associated with a classicizing Roman manner, familiar to him perhaps in the work of an artist such as Taddeo Zuccaro. Zuccaro's fresco, The Virgin attended by the Holy Women at the foot of the Cross (S. Maria della Consolazione, Rome) might have provided the female models, particularly in gesture and in the expressions of grief, for the figures in the left foreground of this painting. Equally, the figure of the Executioner in Zuccaro's fresco, The Martyrdom of St. Paul (S. Marcello al Corso, Rome) is of a type that Rottenhammer has used for two of the three soldiers who, in this composition, lead Jesus to this place of execution. An early date in Rottenhammer's career is further suggested by the treatment of the figure standing above Christ. Whilst comparisons to similar figures by Cavalier d'Arpino might be made, its ultimate derivation is a St. Sebastian by Hans von Aachen, painted for the church of St. Michael's in Rottenhammer's birthplace, Munich.
The choice of copper as a support for this painting is evidently a consequence of his working relationship with Paulus Bril and Jan Brueghel I. Bril had been active in Rome since at least 1582 and had become famous, not only as a painter of landscapes in fresco, but also for his exquisite landscapes on copper panels, which were eagerly sought after by local and foreign collectors alike. The first extant example is dated 1592 - the same year Jan Brueghel I arrived in Rome. Bril's landscape, whose antecedents were the dramatic mountainscapes of Joachim Patenir, provided Rottenhammer and Brueghel with the opportunity for collaborative work over many years. The landscape in the present copper may have been completed by Bril, but given the fluid handling, is more likely to be by a member of his studio, or by Rottenhammer himself.
A further point of interest lies in Rottenhammer's use of a mounted turbaned figure - Pilate perhaps - who is the only figure in this composition to engage the viewer. The identity of the figure is suggested by Rottenhammer's later composition of Christ brought before the People (Staatliche Kunstsammlung, Kassel) dated 1597, in which the same turbaned figure of Pilate appears on the balcony besides Jesus. A similar motif was adopted by Adam Elsheimer, who briefly worked with Rottenhammer in Venice in 1599. Elsheimer used it on at least four other occasions, most memorably in The Stoning of St. Stephen (National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh). It clearly appealed to Rubens, who specifically copied the motif from Elsheimer's original, in a drawing of about 1606 (British Museum, London).
Johann Rottenhammer was Bavarian by birth, the son of a minor court official. His father's connections enabled him to be apprenticed to the court painter, Hans Donauer the Elder, with whom he was to remain for five or six years. Perhaps in search of a wider training, but more probably in pursuit of lucrative commissions, Rottenhammer moved to Italy in 1589. Venice was the obvious first port-of-call, given the long cultural and economic associations the city had enjoyed with Germany. There had been constant movement between Venice and the North throughout the 16th century: Lotto, Titian and Tintoretto had all employed northern painters in workshops and Titian had twice visited the Imperial Court at Augsburg. Without doubt, the most celebrated example of German art in Venice was Dürer's Feast of the Rose Garlands painted in 1506, which had been commissioned by the Scuola dei Tedeschi, a confraternity of ex-patriot Germans, for their chapel in S. Bartolomeo di Rialto, the church at the heart of the German community in Venice and the area to which the young Rottenhammer would have been drawn.
Rottenhammer remained in Venice, however, for the shortest period, moving to Rome in 1591, where according to Ridolfi (Carlo Ridolfi, Meraviglie dell'arte, Venice, 1648, vol. II, p. 76), he collaborated with his fellow northerners, Paulus Bril and Jan Brueghel I. The collaborations continued after Rottenhammer returned to Venice in 1595 and resulted in joint commissions from important patrons, such as Cardinal Federico Borromeo (resident in Rome, 1586-1601). Rottenhammer's mature style was fully developed during his second, and altogether more prolific Venetian period. This was in response to the influence of the city's leading painters, notably Paolo Veronese. Rottenhammer's success at this time is evident from the patronage he received from local collectors and foreign residents, such as Jan Reynst and later by the Gonzagas in Mantua (Vincenzo I Gonzaga was in Venice in 1600). From 1606 until his death, Rottenhammer worked in Germany, where his studio flourished and his Italianate, specifically Venetian style, found a ready market.
The present painting, however, must date from the artist's Roman years - 1591-95. Apart from the glowing colours and the Lottesque treatment of the head of Simon of Cyrene, there is little to suggest the influence of Venetian painting. Instead, Rottenhammer reverts to a style more closely associated with a classicizing Roman manner, familiar to him perhaps in the work of an artist such as Taddeo Zuccaro. Zuccaro's fresco, The Virgin attended by the Holy Women at the foot of the Cross (S. Maria della Consolazione, Rome) might have provided the female models, particularly in gesture and in the expressions of grief, for the figures in the left foreground of this painting. Equally, the figure of the Executioner in Zuccaro's fresco, The Martyrdom of St. Paul (S. Marcello al Corso, Rome) is of a type that Rottenhammer has used for two of the three soldiers who, in this composition, lead Jesus to this place of execution. An early date in Rottenhammer's career is further suggested by the treatment of the figure standing above Christ. Whilst comparisons to similar figures by Cavalier d'Arpino might be made, its ultimate derivation is a St. Sebastian by Hans von Aachen, painted for the church of St. Michael's in Rottenhammer's birthplace, Munich.
The choice of copper as a support for this painting is evidently a consequence of his working relationship with Paulus Bril and Jan Brueghel I. Bril had been active in Rome since at least 1582 and had become famous, not only as a painter of landscapes in fresco, but also for his exquisite landscapes on copper panels, which were eagerly sought after by local and foreign collectors alike. The first extant example is dated 1592 - the same year Jan Brueghel I arrived in Rome. Bril's landscape, whose antecedents were the dramatic mountainscapes of Joachim Patenir, provided Rottenhammer and Brueghel with the opportunity for collaborative work over many years. The landscape in the present copper may have been completed by Bril, but given the fluid handling, is more likely to be by a member of his studio, or by Rottenhammer himself.
A further point of interest lies in Rottenhammer's use of a mounted turbaned figure - Pilate perhaps - who is the only figure in this composition to engage the viewer. The identity of the figure is suggested by Rottenhammer's later composition of Christ brought before the People (Staatliche Kunstsammlung, Kassel) dated 1597, in which the same turbaned figure of Pilate appears on the balcony besides Jesus. A similar motif was adopted by Adam Elsheimer, who briefly worked with Rottenhammer in Venice in 1599. Elsheimer used it on at least four other occasions, most memorably in The Stoning of St. Stephen (National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh). It clearly appealed to Rubens, who specifically copied the motif from Elsheimer's original, in a drawing of about 1606 (British Museum, London).