Painting Detail
Saint Christopher: Religious & History PaintingArtist: Adam Elsheimer
Medium: Painting, Oil on copperplate, 22.5x17.5 cm
Date: c. 1598/99
Genre: Religious, Christianity
Source: Provenance: between 1763 and 1774
This small-format picture shows the Christian legend of the pagan of gigantic stature who was converted after he carried the infant Christ across a ford. Elsheimer, who spent most of his creative life in Italy, made light the most important visual element in the picture, both that real light which flows from the moon, and the mystical light which comes from the infant Christ. Small nuances of lighting, through which man and nature seem to blend into a unified whole, give this night scene a sense of mystery and animation. The sculptural working up of the figures recalls somewhat the style of Tintoretto, but the composition was undoubtedly the idea of Elsheimer himself. Rubens copied the head of the Christ Child, and Elsheimer's influence reached a number of major artists from other schools, among them Rembrandt, Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Domenico Fetti and Pieter Lastman.
Adam Elsheimer (18 March 1578 - 11 December 1610) was a German artist working in Rome who died at only thirty-two, but was very influential in the early 17th century. His relatively few paintings were small scale, nearly all painted on copper plates, of the type often known as cabinet paintings. They include a variety of light effects, and an innovative treatment of landscape. He was an influence on many other artists, including Rembrandt and Peter Paul Rubens.
The largest collection of his work is in Frankfurt. The Alte Pinakothek, Munich has two of his finest night-scene paintings, and Berlin, Bonn, Dresden and Hamburg have paintings. The National Gallery, London has three paintings with others in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, Apsley House, Windsor Castle, Petworth House, the Wellcome Library and Liverpool. In 2006 an exhibition at the Städel, Frankfurt, then Edinburgh, and the Dulwich Gallery in London reunited almost all his oeuvre.