Joseph the Younger Heintz

1600 – 1678

Painter and etcher, member of a Swiss/German family of artists, the son of the noted Prague court painter by the same name, with whose style and choice of subject-matter, however, his work has little in common. The younger Heintz apparently left for Venice at an early age; he spent the rest of his life there. Although Heintz painted a large number of historical or religious pictures, in Venice he started painting scenes of popular festivals, cast in urban settings that usually dominate the actual events. He had at his disposal a long, local tradition of festive and ceremonial imagery that had blossomed during the sixteenth century in the form of prints and paintings. Excellent examples are the works commemorating the official entry of the Polish king Henry III into Venice in 1574 and the coronation of Doge Marino Grimani and his wife in 1595. The buildings in Heintz's paintings lack verisimilitude and the perspective is primitive; nevertheless, his works played a significant role in the evolution of the painted Venetian veduta. Heintz was the first to depict the most famous sites and monuments of Venice, the very subjects chosen by the eighteenth-century vedutisti, though of course their artistic vision was totally different.

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