Franz Christoph Janneck Graz 1703 - 1761 Vienna

Janneck was born in Graz in 1703 and studied there under Matthias Vangus (fl. 1716), but he soon travelled to Vienna where he is first mentioned in documents in the 1730's. In 1740 he was admitted to the Akademie der Bildenden Künste (the Vienese Academy), and of which he was eventually to become an assesor between 1752 and 1758.

Janneck's reputation as one of the leading lights of the Austrian Rococco, like that of his friend Johann Georg Platzer (1704-1761), is mostly built upon his jewel like cabinet pictures, painted with minute attention to detail on small copper panels, and mostly depicting mythological scenes and Fête Champêtres (see for example the picture sold Sotheby's, London, 22 April 2004, lot 101, for £230,000). Although Janneck also completed a small number of religious pictures, such as the present work, the majority of which dating from the 1730's and 1740's.