Johann Michael Rottmayr (Laufen 1654-1730 Vienna)

Johann Michael Rottmayr was a leading Austrian Baroque painter of large-scale religious and secular subjects. This painting was executed while Rottmayr was resident in Salzburg, before he moved to Vienna in the late 1690s. Influenced by the works of Pietro da Cortona, Peter Paul Rubens and Rottmayr’s master, Johann Carl Loth, this early work conveys the artist’s penchant for solid figures swathed in intensely colored clothing like the vibrant red and blue employed in the Virgin’s dress. The composition likely derives from that of Rottmayr’s Lamentation of 1689 in the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich.