Caspar Franz Sambach

1715 – 1795

Austrian painter. He worked in Vienna from 1740 in the workshop of the sculptor Georg Raphael Donner. He trained as a historical painter at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, becoming a member in 1759, a professor in 1762 and director in 1773. His fresco and altarpiece paintings were influenced by other Central European painters, the likes of Paul Troger, Michelangelo Unterberger and the younger Franz Anton Maulbertsch. Sambach was a skilful ornamental artist and painted his own architecture; producing the figure inserts that imitate reliefs on his frescoes, as well as on his canvases depicting putti, making use of the methods learned from the works Donner. In Hungary, the high altar and ceiling frescoes, together with the altarpieces of the Jesuit church in Székesfehérvár (1749-50), preserve his early, relaxed style. Sambach frequently painted mock low reliefs in the style of Marten Jozef Geeraerts (1707-1791) and Jacob de Wit. He executed frescoes in the Jesuit church of Stuhlweissenburg and an altarpiece in the church of the Franciscans in Comischa.

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