Georg Gärtner the Younger

Lüttgens collection, Aachen.

Aachen, Museumsverein, Ausstellung altniederländischer und altdeutscher Gemälde aus Aachener Privatbesitz, 1 May - 2 June 1929, no. 17;
Aachen, Suermondt-Museum, Schöne Dinge aus einer Aachener Privatsammlung, October 1971, no. 45.

Ausstellung altniederländischer und altdeutscher Gemälde aus Aachener Privatbesitz, exhibition catalogue, Aachen 1929, pp. 11-12, cat. no. 17, reproduced incorrectly as no. 16.

Signed and dated 1618, this depiction of a young Saint John the Evangelist is a large and rare work by Georg Gärtner the Younger, a German painter and engraver active in Nuremberg in the first half of the seventeenth century.  After the death of Hans Hoffmann in circa 1591-1592, Gärtner became one of the foremost artists of the Dürer Renaissance, a phenomenon of increased interest in Albrecht Dürer’s works that spread throughout Europe in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries with a particularly strong foothold in Nuremberg and in the courts of Prague and Munich.  Praised by his contemporaries as “felicissimus Düreri imitator,” Gärtner copied Dürer’s works and also developed his own distinct style by combining figures and elements from various Dürer paintings and prints.  

In the present painting, the youthful apostle with long flowing hair and clothed in vibrant green and red fabrics sits within a study surrounded by a number of his attributes, including the eagle, a pen, and a book opened to a page from his gospel.  Characteristics of the Dürer Renaissance are found in the soft modelling, in the golden light that highlights John’s features, and in the print hanging on the wall which is based on Dürer’s 1514 engraving of Virgin and Christ Child standing on a Crescent Moon.¹ The painstaking detail with which Gärtner completed this work is particularly visible in the soft golden wisps hair surrounding John’s face as well as in the rendering of the clear glass bottle on the ledge near the print.

1.  See A. Bartsch, Le Peintre graveur, Vienna 1803, vol. 7, no. 53.33.