Adam Elsheimer

Adam Elsheimer (18 March 1578 – 11 December 1610) was a German Baroque painter who worked in Rome. Though his career was short, his relatively few paintings were very influential in the early 17th century. His works were nearly all small oils 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.

Life and work Photo of 1900 of the house in Frankfurt where Elsheimer was born and grew up. Destroyed 1944.

Elsheimer was born in Frankfurt am Main, one of ten children and the son of a master tailor. His father's house (which survived until destroyed by Allied bombs in 1944) was a few metres from the church where Albrecht Dürer's Heller Altarpiece was then displayed. He was apprenticed to the artist Philipp Uffenbach. He probably visited Strasbourg in 1596. At the age of twenty, he travelled to Italy via Munich, where he was documented in 1598.

His stay in Venice is undocumented, but the influence on his style is clear. He probably worked as an assistant to Johann Rottenhammer, some of whose drawings he owned. Rottenhammer was a German who had been living in Italy for some years, and was the first German painter to specialize in cabinet paintings. Uffenbach had specialized in large altarpieces, and although Elsheimer's earliest small paintings on copper seem to date from before he arrived in Italy, Rottenhammer's influence is clear in his mature work.

There are drawings in Paris (Musée du Louvre) and Edinburgh among other locations.

Only two works are on public display outside Europe. One is in the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth (The Flight into Egypt), and the other is the Mocking of Ceres, now in the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, Ontario, badly damaged by fire at some point in its history; it had been part of the Dutch Gift to Charles II of England in 1660.

Examples of his work