Johann Georg Platzer

Possibly anonymous sale, Frankfurt am Main, Auktionshaus Arnold, 7 March 1987, lot 234 (as Franz Christoph Janneck);

Where possibly acquired.

Born into a family of painters in the southern Tyrol, Johann Georg Platzer was a leading exponent of the Austrian rococo style. He probably arrived in Vienna around 1726, and here enrolled in the Akademie der bildenden Künste. Together with his friend and contemporary Franz Christoph Janneck (1703–1761), he specialised in painting small-scale conversation pieces and allegorical works, remarkable for their precision of detail, colourful palette and lively brushwork. Platzer's almost miniaturist technique was perfectly suited to the medium of copper, which became his support of choice. 

This painting compares closely in composition and technique to several other coppers by Platzer, including his Merry Company on a Terrace (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, inv. no. 2044), as well as his Allegory of Hearing and Allegory of Taste (Graz, Alte Galerie, Landesmuseums Joanneum, inv. nos 884 and 885).¹ The handling of the figures also compares with a small religious work by the artist of Salome Receiving the Head of St. John the Baptist.²

We are grateful to Dr. Christina Pucher for endorsing the attribution on the basis of digital photographs.

¹ A pair, both oil on copper, 24.7 x 38.7 cm. See U. Becher, Delikatesse der Malerei: Meisterwerke von Johann Georg Platzer, exh. cat., Graz 2007, pp. 134–37, cat. nos 33–34, reproduced.

² Oil on copper, 29.5 x 38.7 cm. See Becher 2007, pp. 54–55, cat. no. 2, reproduced.