John of Germany

JOHN OF GERMANY. - Painter of German origin; the only information available about him concerns his stay in Venice, where he is mentioned for the first time in 1441, and in Padua, where he resided from 1447 and where he died in 1450. His artistic activity was carried out solely in collaboration with the Muranese painter Antonio Vivarini, and numerous works from it have survived: a polyptych of 1441 formerly in S. Stefano in Venice (Museum of Vienna); also in Venice the three altarpieces of the chapel of S. Tarasio in S. Zaccaria (1443-44), the Coronation of the Virgin in S. Pantaleone (1444) and the Madonna and Saints of the Scuola della Carità (1446, now at the Accademia); in Padua a polyptych of 1447 formerly in S. Francesco (castle of Konopiště in Bohemia) and the decoration of the vault of the Ovetari Chapel at the Eremitani (now destroyed).

In the absence of certain works attributable to G. alone, the determination of his style presents a fascinating and still open problem. The most reliable hypothesis is that, in the collaborative works, the parts in which an essentially decorative spirit prevails, of a rather archaic taste, with strong affinities to International Gothic, are his. On the basis of this criterion a homogeneous group of paintings was assigned to G., which were initially considered to be by Vivarini alone, and of which the rich Adoration of the Magi in the Berlin Museum, the Crucifix with scenes of the Passion in the Ca' d'Oro in Venice, a Crucifixion at Konopiště and others form part. Current criticism, on the other hand, tends to remove from G. certain works, such as the Madonna of the church of the Filippini in Padua and that of the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan, which had initially been attributed predominantly to him.

Nolfo di Carpegna