Johann Heinrich Schönfeld, Gentildonna Riding At A Tavern And Dice Players

Johann Heinrich Schönfeld (Biberach an der Riß, 23 March 1609 - Augsburg, 1684) (attr.)

Gentildonna riding at a tavern and dice players

(2) Oil on canvas, 98 x 74.5 cm

Johann Heinrich Schönfeld (23 March 1609, Biberach an der Riß - 1684, Augsburg) was a German painter and engraver who was also active in Italy. He was the eldest son of Johann Baptist Schönfeld and Susanna Schumacher. His father, a famous goldsmith, was the mayor of Biberach an der Riß and his family once belonged to the nobility.

The artist was trained in his native country by the painter Johann Sichelbein of Memmingen: from this very first segment of the artist’s activity we have only the charcoal sketch on paper for a Diana signed and dated 1626. Towards the end of the 1720s, the young painter was in Stuttgart at the ducal court, as well as Johann Wilhelm Baur, engraver and miniaturist, who later found himself in Rome. From 1633 he stayed for a long time in Italy, not only because of the Thirty Years' War, which during those years bloodied central Europe and greatly hindered the art market in the German countries, but also because of the charm exercised by the peninsula, Perceived in German as a destination for intellectual pilgrimages. He was first in Rome, where he was influenced by the classical tendencies of Nicolas Poussin and the baroque decorativism of Pietro da Cortona, then, starting from 1638, in Naples, where he made his own, reinterpreting it, the luminism of matrix caravaggesca of Bernardo Cavallino. During the Roman period, he frequented other German artists, among them certainly Joachim von Sandrart and Johann Wilhelm Baur. He painted a Visitation (circa 1647), now lost, for the Church of Sant'Elisabetta de' Fornari, owned by the German bakers in Rome.