Designed by Hieronymus Hess, Basle, 1849
executed by Ferdinand Beck, Schaffhausen, 1852
Height 77 cm, width 47 cm
Inv. 1981.28.
In 1849 Eduard Merian Bischoff had four glass paintings commemorating illustrious members of his family made for his newly built neo Gothic castle of Teufen in the canton of Zurich. No less a person than the Basle history painter Hieronymus Hess who had contributed substantially to the revival of glass painting in Basle since 1833 designed the memorial panels. The final picture in the series shows the most distinguished of these ancestors, the engraver and art critic Matthäus Merian the Elder, who died in 1650. He is shown in his studio, surrounded by three of his children who were also practising artists. The portrait medallions in the framing pillars testify to Hess's personal admiration for the landscape painter Gaspard Poussin and his own teacher, Joseph Anton Koch.
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