Johann Liss
Encyclopedia
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
Baroque painter of the 17th century, active mainly in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
.
Biography
Liss was born in Oldenburg (Holstein)Oldenburg (Holstein)
Oldenburg in Holstein is a town at the southwestern shore of the Baltic Sea. The nearest city is Lübeck. The town belongs to the region of Holstein, today in the state Schleswig-Holstein of Germany....
in Schleswig-Holstein
Schleswig-Holstein
Schleswig-Holstein is the northernmost of the sixteen states of Germany, comprising most of the historical duchy of Holstein and the southern part of the former Duchy of Schleswig...
, Germany. After an initial education in his home state, he continued his studies, according to Houbraken, with Hendrick Goltzius in Haarlem
Haarlem
Haarlem is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland, the northern half of Holland, which at one time was the most powerful of the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic...
and Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
. Around 1620 he travelled through Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
to Venice. He moved to Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
around 1620–1622, and his first works there were influenced by the style of Caravaggio
Caravaggio
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on the Baroque...
.
Although his earlier work was concerned with the contrasts of light and shadow, his final move to Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
in the early 1620s modified his style and gave impetus to brilliant color and a spirited treatment of the painted surface.In 1627, he was created an admired large altarpiece
Altarpiece
An altarpiece is a picture or relief representing a religious subject and suspended in a frame behind the altar of a church. The altarpiece is often made up of two or more separate panels created using a technique known as panel painting. It is then called a diptych, triptych or polyptych for two,...
, the Inspiration of Saint Jerome in San Nicolò da Tolentino
San Nicolò da Tolentino
The Chiesa di San Nicolò da Tolentino, commonly known as the Tolentini, is a church in Venice, northern Italy, the home of the Theatines order in the city. The Theatines arrived in Venice in 1527 after the Sack of Rome. The church dedicated to Saint Nicholas of Tolentino was begun in 1590 by...
. His loose brushstrokes seem precursor to rococo
Rococo
Rococo , also referred to as "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly ornate, florid, and playful...
styles of Guardi
Francesco Guardi
Francesco Lazzaro Guardi was a Venetian painter of veduta, a member of the Venetian School. He is considered to be among the last practitioners, along with his brothers, of the classic Venetian school of painting....
brothers.This final style, along with that of other "foreign" painters residing in Venice, Domenico Fetti
Domenico Fetti
Domenico Fetti was an Italian Baroque painter active mainly in Rome, Mantua and Venice.-Biography:...
and Bernardo Strozzi
Bernardo Strozzi
Bernardo Strozzi was a prominent and prolific Italian Baroque painter born and active mainly in Genoa, and also active in Venice.-Biography:Strozzi was born in Genoa. He was probably not related to the other Strozzi family....
, represent the first inroads of Baroque style into the republic.
Liss fled to Verona
Verona
Verona ; German Bern, Dietrichsbern or Welschbern) is a city in the Veneto, northern Italy, with approx. 265,000 inhabitants and one of the seven chef-lieus of the region. It is the second largest city municipality in the region and the third of North-Eastern Italy. The metropolitan area of Verona...
to escape the Plague
Bubonic plague
Plague is a deadly infectious disease that is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis, named after the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin. Primarily carried by rodents and spread to humans via fleas, the disease is notorious throughout history, due to the unrivaled scale of death...
spreading in Venice, but succumbed there prematurely in 1629. According to Houbraken, he worked day and night on his paintings, so that Joachim von Sandrart
Joachim von Sandrart
Joachim von Sandrart was a German Baroque art-historian and painter, active in Amsterdam during the Dutch Golden Age.-Biography:Sandrart was born in Frankfurt, but the family originated from Mons...
felt that his health was at risk and urged him to join him in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
.
His legacy is as a painter of both sensuous mythological
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
and pious biblical subjects, a master of colors and Baroque painting. He was most influential to Venetian 18th century painters like Sebastiano Ricci
Sebastiano Ricci
Sebastiano Ricci was an Italian painter of the late Baroque school of Venice. About the same age as Piazzetta, and an elder contemporary of Tiepolo, he represents a late version of the vigorous and luminous Cortonesque style of grand manner fresco painting.-Early years:He was born in Belluno, son...
, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo , also known as Gianbattista or Giambattista Tiepolo, was an Italian painter and printmaker from the Republic of Venice...
and Giovanni Piazzetta.
Examples of work
- Lute Player
- Visitation of St Jerome
- Vision of Saint Jerome http://visitors.ringling.org/eMuseum/code/emuseum.asp?style=Browse¤trecord=1&page=search&profile=objects&searchdesc=Johann%20Liss&quicksearch=Johann%20Liss&newvalues=1&newstyle=single&newcurrentrecord=1
- Peasants playing mora
- Death of Cleopatra http://www.wga.hu/html/l/liss/cleopatr.html
- Abel mourned by his parents http://www.wga.hu/html/l/liss/abel_mou.html
- Venus in front of mirror (1625–26, Uffizi)http://www.wga.hu/html/l/liss/venus_mi.html
- Death of Phaetonhttp://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/artistWorks?searchField=&searchString=&workBatchIndex=0&artistBatchIndex=2&artistName=LISS%2C%20Johann&indexLetter=L