Johann Liss
(1593 - 1629) |
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Genre Subjects, Mythological Narratives, Secular Narratives Art Work
| Name: |
Johann Liss |
| Gender: |
Male |
| Place of Birth: |
Oldenburg |
| Nationality: |
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| Birth: |
1593 |
| Death: |
1629 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
Genre Subjects, Mythological Narratives, Secular Narratives |
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| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painting
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Biography
| Together with Adam Elsheimer and Johann Heinrich Schoenfeld, Liss is considered one of three major German baroque artists, but he is also claimed by the Dutch and the Italians. A precocious and talented figure, Liss in fact fused Dutch, Flemish, and Italian sources into an original and appealing style. Active in the Netherlands, he spent the bulk of his working career in Italy, which helps to explain why so many different regions regard him as their own. Striking parallels have been shown between Liss and Elsheimer. Both artists went to Italy in their youth, and both found there a permanent base for their activities. Both artists died prematurely while in their thirties, and both were profoundly influential despite the relatively short span of their careers. Very little documentation about Liss survives. Most of what is known about him derives from Joachim von Sandrart's account of his own visit to Venice in 1628 and his meeting there with Liss. We know Liss was born in the area north of Liibeck, and it has been suggested that his father might have been a painter working for the Holstein dukes. Liss himself gives Holstein as his birthplace by virtue of inscriptions found on two drawings preserved in the Cleveland Museum of Art. A Johann Liss of Schleswig, whose wife was also a painter, has been identified from documents as possibly being Johann's father. Liss might have trained with his father before leaving for the Netherlands. He was probably in Haarlem, Amsterdam, and Antwerp between roughly 1615 and 1619, and Sandrart notes that he emulated Goltzius's manner in this period. A portrayal of A Painter in Her Studio (The Hague, Rijksdienst voor Roerende Monumenten) is ascribed to Liss and is thought to reflect his beginnings in Haarlem under the influence of Dirck Hals and Willem Buytewech. A Satyr and a Peasant (Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Gemaldegalerie) points to his strong response to Jordaens* in Antwerp, an artist who would remain influential throughout Liss's career, both for his monumental conception of form and for his fluid application of paint. Liss arrived in Italy by 1621, stopping in Venice. Little is known of his activity there, but a Morra Game (now Kassel) is ascribed to his first Venetian sojourn, reflecting as it does the influence of Domenico Fetti. By 1622 Liss was in Rome, where Sandrart states he began working in a different style. In Rome he joined the Schildersbent and was nicknamed Pan, perhaps because of the candid eroticism of his large Banquet of Soldiers and Courtesans known in two versions, now in Kassel and Nuremberg. Changing his format and subject to suit prevailing Roman tastes, Liss portrayed the kind of jolly bambocciate subject popularized by Jan Miel, among others. Yet here, too, Liss retains his allegiance to Jordaens's figure type, particularly in his portrayal of the smiling courtesan. Like all gifted artists, Liss was a visual sponge, and in Rome he clearly absorbed a number of sources, including Caravaggio, whose influence is reflected in paintings such as Amor (Cleveland Museum of Art), although its sensuous application of paint may mark it as a product of his later Venetian years. A fusion of Flemish and Roman characteristics marks a number of Liss's pictures, including his Judith (versions in Budapest, Sz6pmiiv6zeti Muzeum; London, National Gallery; Vienna, Kunsthistoriches Museum). By the mid-1620s Liss was probably back in Venice, but his name is not recorded in guild records until 1629 (just before his death), where he is listed as "Lis Zuanne fiamengo" (Jan Lis the Fleming). His only known officially commissioned work, the altarpiece of The Vision of SL Jerome for S. Nicol6 da Tolentino, was done in Venice, though its exact date is not known. Scholars argue that it could not have been done before 1627. In the work we find a loose and fluid application of paint and an expansion of form across the canvas; these give the image a greater sense of dissolving into patterns of light and shadow as well as a greater emphasis on painterly surface that was such an inspiration for later painters, particularly Fragonard. Grouped to Liss's Venetian period are his Ecstasy of St. Paul (Berlin, Staatliche Museen, GemSldegalerie) and Finding of Moses (Lille, Musee des Beaux-Arts). His habit of repeating his compositions several times (a practice not uncommon in the seventeenth century), together with the absence of dates on his pictures, has made the task of isolating his autograph oeuvre and establishing a real chronology fairly difficult. Most sources assert that Liss died in the plague that swept through Venice in 1629. But the archives of the city of Verona state that a Gio. Lis Olandese died there on 3 December 1631. Despite his short career, fifty-six paintings have been ascribed to him, as well as a number of drawings. The latter have been the subject of a recent important exhibition whose catalogue offers a useful appreciation of the artist and his development. |
Samples of Work
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