Elegant Couple with an Old Maid in an Exterior

Private collection

genre

This painting has a companion piece of the same size and same subject. One is set in an interior, the other in an exterior. In both paintings money and riches (the pearl necklace) appear to be used as a means of payment or exchange between the man and the woman, with the old maid, or madame, playing the intermediary.

Elegant Couple with an Old Maid in an Exterior

About the Artist

Franz Christoph Janneck

1703 – 1761

Austrian painter. He was a pupil of Matthias Vangus (fl 1716) in Graz before he came to Vienna, where he was first mentioned in documents of the 1730s. His younger brother, Matthias Jakob, studied at the Viennese academy in 1728-30 and in 1733. About 1735 Janneck travelled in Austria and southern Germany; in Frankfurt am Main he met Karl Aigen (1684-1762), Christian Hilfgott Brand and Josef Orient (1677-1747). In 1740 he studied at the Viennese academy, joining the Frey-Compagnie (a voluntary military company) in 1741. With Paul Troger, and later with Michelangelo Unterberger, he held the office of assessor at the academy between 1752 and 1758. Janneck's reputation as one of the leading lights of the Austrian Rococo is mostly built upon his jewel like cabinet pictures, painted with minute attention to detail on small copper panels, and mostly depicting mythological scenes and Fete Champetres. He also completed a small number of religious pictures.

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