Ambergergasse
1220 Donaustadt

 12,00

Pages: 20 + cover
Edition: 5 + artists copy (first edition)

Date:
Film:
Camera:

5 in stock

Buy a print

 

Ambergergasse (Essling), named (date unknown) after the German painter Christoph Amberger (around 1505–1561/62).

He was primarily a portrait painter and is considered an outstanding painter of the generation after Dürer and Burgkmair.

Contrary to the earlier assumptions that Amberger learned painting from Hans Burgkmair or Leonhard Beck in Augsburg, more recent research assumes that he stayed with Hans Maler zu Schwaz until 1529/30. Amberger was accepted into the painters’ guild in Augsburg in 1530, where he worked primarily as a portrait painter until his death. On May 15, 1530, Amberger was awarded the so-called master’s title by the guild of Augsburg painters, glaziers, carvers and goldsmiths, which was still rooted in the medieval legal system and was required in order to be able to work independently as an artisan.

In 1548 he met Titian.

A number of portraits of famous and respected contemporaries of Amberger have come down to us. He painted portraits of numerous Augsburg patricians and their wives as well as portraits of Charles V (around 1530, this work established his reputation), Georg von Frundsberg, Konrad Peutinger (1543), the Fugger and Welser and the cosmographer Sebastian Münster. In addition, around 30 drawings are known. Amberger only occasionally made designs for woodcuts.

His most important work is probably the high altar panel in Augsburg Cathedral, which was created in 1554 after the altar was destroyed by Hans Holbein the Elder in iconoclasm.

 

 

It was strange visiting Ambergergasse, which is located very close to the house of my ex-partners grandfather who I was very fond of, too. He died in 2019 and the cemetery where he's buried is right around the corner of Ambergergasse, so I visited his grave on that day (Nov 6th 2022) and thought about him.