RKD STUDIES

More important for our work are the two Zicks, Johann, the father, and Januarius, the son.¹ They originated from Southern Germany, but their professional activity extended mainly over the areas of Würzburg and Mainz as well as Trier. Johann Zick (1702-1762) is supposed to have been in Venice and to have studied with Giambattista Piazetta. This is quite possible, as the Italian schooling is clearly noticeable in his work, especially in the fresco technique.² But the cabinet paintings of his later years, especially the lighting effects and even the figure types in his biblical representations, demonstrate that he took Rembrandt and his dramatic compositions as a model.³ He copied Rembrandt’s Blinding of Samson, then in the collection Schönborn [1-2], whose lighting effects he took as the basis for one of his own compositions of a Judith and Holofernes painting [3-4]!⁴

A Descent from the Cross (art market) [5]⁵ makes use of motifs from Rembrandt’s etchings. A Flagellation of Christ [6],⁶ Seneca’s Death in Karlsruhe [7], and many more paintings and ‘character heads’ testify to the same. He loved the early Rembrandt, his sharp light, fanciful architecture and effective composition. The cellar light also reminds us of the painters from Utrecht (Nikolaus Knüpfer and Jacob Duck), the ghostly movement of Leonart Bramer and the yellow-green color of Adriaen Verdoel. Did Rembrandt followers of Frankfurt influence him? Trautmann’s ‘Rembrandt’ is also a bizarre transformation in the sense of Bramer. Apart from an Italian-Southern German component in the works of Zick, one can clearly point out borrowings from Van Dyck. He uses his Christ-type in the above mentioned Flagellation of Christ, furthermore, even the Seneca looks like a Van Dyck’s Christ. In spite of all this we do not want to infer that Zick has nothing personal; on the contrary, the several elements have been woven into a unity with great flair.

5
Johann Zick
The descent of the cross
Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, inv./cat.nr. 2236

This is even more applicable to his son Januarius Zick (1732-1797). Initially he was taught by his father, was then in Paris (1757) and a year later in Rome with Raphael Mengs. From 1760 he settled in Ehrenbreitstein, where he flourished as a court painter in Trier. Like Seekatz and Brinckmann he created suppraportes in the French manner (Boucher) for several castles. But even these works are not purely French, for like the painters from Frankfurt, everything is shifted to the coarse and rustic. In his cabinet paintings the French element is even more of an exception. Already in the early paintings with biblical content [8], made under the eyes of his father, he delighted in Rembrandt-like, spooky chiaroscuro, which cuts across a concentrated beam of light. To strengthen the uncannily impression, he dressed his figures with preference in fanciful, Oriental costumes. David before Saul (Trier) [9]⁷ and the Arrest of Christ (Church of Our Lady, Coblenz) [10] are telling examples of this.⁸ His style formed itself on the early Rembrandt and on the works of the pupils or imitators of the young Rembrandt, like Leonaert Bramer and Adriaen Verdoel, whose green grey colors he also preferred.

8
Januarius Zick
The Entombement of Christ

The Christ on the Mount of Olives [11] distinguishes itself from this group only in the fact, that the main character has been modelled after an elegantly moving figure of Rubens;⁹ the soldiers are again in Bramer’s style. His stipple technique also is reminiscent of Bramer and Egbert van Heemskerck. Especially the Old Testament themes are understood in Rembrandt´s spirit: Abraham Receives the Three Angels (Munich) [12], The Sacrifice of Isaac (multiple compositions) [13-14], Saul and the Witch of Endor (Würzburg; 1752) [15] are such paintings, the last one again completely in Bramer’s manner. A Crucifixion [16]¹⁰ unites Rubens’s Coup de Lance with Rembrandt’s light and painterly technique.

11
Januarius Zick
Christ and the Agony in the Garden: an Angel comes to comfort Him, 1760s
Whereabouts unknown

The Healing of the Cripple in Würzburg [17] still recalls of the Samson and Delilah compositions by Rembrandt, which his father copied.¹¹ A Raising of Lazarus (Collection Werne) [18]¹² is a ‘free translation’ of Rembrandt’s etching of 1642 [19]. A copy by Zick after Rembrandt’s etching B. 19 (Oranienbaum Castle) was perhaps made earlier [20-21].¹³ Zick now and again stuck to Rembrandt compositions of the middle period, but he dramatized them anew through a fantastic lighting and restless movements.

His genre paintings with dancing maids are however Flemish in the sense of Pieter Angellis [22-24]. Zick’s late works are classically calmed down, the colors brighter and the modelling smoother. He drew closer again to Adriaen van der Werff, he even painted together with Angelika Kaufmann! The portraits now only look ‘Dutch’ insofar as they are not French. A group portrait like that of the Remy family of 1776 (collection Ernst von Claer)¹⁴ [25] can best be compared with the work of Johann (John) Zoffany. Free from reveling in Dutch light, they stand as realistically captured and greatly conceived figures at the beginning of the new Classicsm.

22
Januarius Zick
Dancing farmers in front of the inn, c. 1756-1757
Augsburg, Städtische Kunstsammlungen Augsburg, inv./cat.nr. L 783

The Dutch schooling had not been in vain, but at the end of his life he had attained the style of his era. Without doubt Januarius Zick owed the acquaintance with Rembrandt in the first place to the teaching of his father. As Johannes Zick had been Tiepolo’s pupil in Venice, Feulner defended the thesis that the complete Rembrandt orientation came to him by way of Venice.¹⁵ This explanation seems far-fetched to Leber and to me.¹⁶ Venetian easel painting was by no means an offshoot of Rembrandt’s art, and yet the Zick’s choose to follow the Dutch masters precisely in this way. They copied paintings and etchings by Rembrandt and indeed they wanted to imitate the impetuous, dramatic painting of the young Rembrandt and his school, that was unknown in Venice. Why should we assume a different source of Rembrandt inspiration for the Zicks than for Brinckmann and Trautmann of Frankfurt?

The influence of Rembrandt is by no means limited to the two personalities of father and son Zick. Anonymous paintings like the Liberation of Saint Peter and the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist in Frankfurt [26-27] show a similar style, in this case clearly following the Rembrandt pupil Aert Jansz. Marienhof.¹⁷

The Mannheim collection offered the artists of this circle a rich choice of pictures by Rembrandt, Rubens and other Netherlandish and Venetian painters. Especially the etchers, such as Andreas Ludwig Bissel (1773-1847), Johannes Pieter de Frey (1770-1834),¹⁸ Heinrich Sintzenich (1752–1812) and others, got their inspiration here.

25
Januarius Zick
Portrait of the Remy Family from Bensdorf near Koblenz, dated 1776
Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, inv./cat.nr. 1557

Also in this area we find, apart from Rembrandt imitators, landscapists, who continued the Nicolaes Berchem and Jan Both tradition, like Daniel Hien (1725-1773) [28-29] and his pupil Georg Friedrich Meyer (1733/35-1779) [30-31].¹⁹ Hien also painted still-lifes in the Dutch and Flemish taste [32-35]. Catharina Treu (1743-1811), the still-life painter from Bamberg, was a court painter in Mannheim, before she went to Düsseldorf as a professor.²⁰

Gottlieb Welté (1748/49-1792) from Mainz focused more on the peasant painting à la Teniers and Ostade, which is conceived in a French way [36-37].²¹ Friedrich Müller (1749-1825), called Maler Müller [Müller the Painter] drew in all kinds of ways: wild Rembrandt drawings and also sheets with landscapes in the style of the Italianate Dutch masters [38-39].²² Lorenz Schönberger (1768-1846), who belonged to a later generation, harked back rather to Ruisdael compositions, when he occasionally wanted to paint something Dutch for a change.²³