Hans Johann Rottenhammer the Elder

Like a number of the most successful artists of his time, Johann Rottenhammer worked in several of the leading courts and artistic centres of late 16^th and early 17^th-century Europe, and achieved widespread fame as a painter of exquisitely refined, small-scale religious and mythological scenes, usually painted on copper. 

Rottenhammer was born in Munich, the son of the master of the Imperial stables, and trained there with the court painter, Hans Donauer.  After this, he travelled to Italy, where he remained from 1588 until 1606, working first in Treviso in the studio of Lodewijk Toeput, known as Pozzoserrato, and then in Venice.  This was followed by a brief stay in Rome, but by 1596 he was back in Venice, where he remained for ten years, marrying a local woman and establishing a highly successful workshop.  As well as making much sought-after independent works, he also collaborated with Paul Bril, the leading landscape specialist in Rome, painting figures onto copper panels that would be sent to Rome for Bril to add the landscape backgrounds.  Rottenhammer also produced collaborative works of this type together with Jan Brueghel (when both artists were working in Rome) and later with the young Adam Elsheimer, in Venice. 

One of Rottenhammer’s leading Italian patrons was Cardinal Federico Borromeo, for whom he worked both during and after his stay in Rome, and during this period he also received commissions from Ferdinando Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, and from the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, for whom he also acted as a buying agent and picture restorer.  In 1606, Rottenhammer returned to Germany, settling in Augsburg, where he was based for the rest of his life.  There he painted not only the small, jewel-like works on which his reputation had been established but also several major altarpieces, and in 1611 he even executed the important frescoed decorations on the façade of the Hopfer house.

Despite the great successes that Rottenhammer achieved over his relatively long career, his drawings remain rare, and it is extremely unusual for three fine examples to come to the market at one time.  They were assembled by a collector who was justifiably fascinated by the artist, and an outstanding painting from the same collection is included in the Old Master Paintings evening sale, also on 8^th July.  Each of the three drawings encapsulates a very different aspect of the artist’s draughtsmanship, in which northern, Venetian and Roman influences all play a part, and together they provide a revealing snapshot of both the variety and the quality of this highly original artist’s drawing style.

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This exuberant, richly worked drawing, with its complex, multi-layered composition and dynamic, rhythmic penwork, is stylistically typical of the drawings that Rottenhammer produced during his stay in Venice in the 1590s and the early 1600s.  As the biographer Carlo Ridolfi noted in 1648¹, during these years Rottenhammer was very close with the great Venetian master Jacopo Palma, called Palma il Giovane.  It is the combination of the influence of Palma with the northern elements of Rottenhammer’s earlier works that defines his drawing style of this period. 

Extremely close to this in style is a drawing representing The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine, in a private collection, which was probably executed during Rottenhammer’s stay in Rome, in 1594-5, but demonstrates all the stylistic qualities of his Venetian drawings.²  Also closely comparable are the drawings of The Judgement of Paris, in the Yale University Art Gallery³, and The Adoration of the Shepherds, in Nuremberg.⁴  The latter of these ranks among the very finest of Rottenhammer’s drawings, as does also the present splendid image of The Adoration of the Golden Calf.  

1.  Cited, M. Hochmann, ‘Hans Rottenhammer and Pietro Mera: two northern artists in Rome and Venice,’ The Burlington Magazine, September 2003, p. 643, n. 19
2.  Sale, Milan, Sotheby’s, 8 March 2002, lot 1300; Hans Rottenhammer, begehrt - vergessen - neu entdeckt, exhib. cat., Schloss Brake, Weserrenaissance-Museum, and Prague, Nationalgalerie, 2008-9, pp. 13-14, fig. 8
3.  E. Haverkamp-Begemann and A.-M. S. Logan, European Drawings and Watercolours in the Yale University Art Gallery 1500-1900, New Haven/London 1970, vol. I, p. 106, no. 176, vol. II, pl. 101; Hans Rottenhammer.. exh. cat., op. cit., 2008-9, p. 74, fig. 118 
4.  Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum; Hans Rottenhammer.. exh. cat., op. cit., 2008-9, p. 65, fig. 104