Portrait of the painter Higiemond

This head study is related in pose and physiognomy to an illustration by the engraver Philipp Kilian included in the painter Joachim von Sandrart’s art-historical magnum opus, Teutsche Academie der Edlen Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste, first published in Nuremberg between 1675 and 1679. The print (fig. 1; Teutsche Academie, II, Nuremberg, 1675, book II, pl. T, after p. 200) depicts an artist identified in a section on Chinese painting as ‘the Indian Higiemondo, generally called the Black man’ (‘der Indianer Higiemondo, ingemein der Schwarze genannt’), whom, according to Sandrart, ‘although far from all art’, was considered the best Chinese artist (I, Nuremberg, 1675, book III, p. 100). The identity of the artist is something of a mystery; and while he is clearly presented as the best of artist active in the East (Chinese or ‘Indian’), he is depicted in the engraved portrait as an African. While the artist’s name appears to be derived from a passage in Pliny’s Naturalis historia (XXXV), Sandrart almost certainly invented the painter to enliven his pioneering discussion of Chinese painting (F. Wappenschmidt, ‘Sandrarts “indianischer” Maler Higiemond. Eine authentische Künstlerpersönlichkeit oder ein Synonym dür die fredmartige Malerei Asiens?’, in Aus aller Herren Länder. Die Künstler der Teutschen Academie von Joachim von Sandrart, Turnhout, 2015, pp. 15-29, in particular pp. 15, 21-24). To provide his likeness, he must have made the present study, working from an unidentified model, as the basis for the final print model, which survives in a less lively drawing in black chalk, inscribed ‘Higiomonte Indus’, in an album at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich (Cod. Icon. 366, fol. 26; see C. Mazetti di Pietralata, Joachim von Sandrart (1606-1688). I disegni, Milan, 2011, no. 228; Wappenschmidt, op. cit., p. 15, fig. 1). As an illustration of the early interest in the history of non-European art by a European author, albeit one probably not grounded in facts, but especially as a sensitive life study in the artist's favorite medium, the drawing is a precious addition to the œuvre of one the greatest personalities in seventeenth-century German art.

Fig. 1. Philipp Kilian, after Joachim von Sandrart, Portraits of six artists, among which Higiemondo.