Painting: Byron of the Baroque

The overwhelming impression conveyed by the great baroque masters of the 17th century, from Caravaggio to Rubens, is their delight in optical illusions, soaring space, voluptuous forms and twisting asymmetrical line. Johann Heinrich Schönfeld, a long-forgotten 17th century artist who achieved his first one-man show in 300 years in West Germany this fall, shared his century’s delight in asymmetry and illusion, but drew the line when it came to voluptuousness. In the 89 canvases and 107 graphics assembled at Ulm’s prestigious city museum, Schönfeld displays himself as a moody, broody, in fact positively Byronic master of the baroque.

Little is known about his life, though he was much admired in his time. The son of a goldsmith, Schönfeld, a Protestant, was born in 1609 in Swabia. He studied in Stuttgart, then traveled to Rome and Naples, where his style became more Italianate, and where he won commissions from the princely Orsinis and the Torlonias. In 1651, after the end of the Thirty Years’ War in Germany, Schönfeld returned to his homeland and settled in Augsburg, where he married and built a home. Before his death in 1682 or 1683, he traveled the length and breadth of Mitteleuropa, executing hundreds of canvases and murals for castles and monasteries in Munich, Salzburg, Vienna, Bohemia, and Hungary.

West German critics greeted the rediscovery of Schönfeld with rejoicing, calling him “a man of major stature.” They were somewhat at a loss to explain how such a great master could have been consigned to oblivion for so long. The best explanation seemed to be that Schönfeld’s preoccupation with the macabre and the absurd, his penchant for scenes of gravediggers and treasure seekers, marked him as a German Romantic two centuries ahead of his time. Then, too, Schönfeld limned his scenes of violence in a cool, depersonalized vein. In the opinion of Ulm’s deputy director, Dr. Wilhelm Lehmbruck, “It is this remoteness, this kind of alienation, that makes him seem attractive today.”