STIMMER, TOBIAS. – Painter and engraver, born in Schaffhausen on 17 April 1539, died in Strasbourg on 4 January 1584.
He was one of the principal exponents of Late Mannerism in the Germanic countries. Trained in Zurich under Hans Asper, he worked in Schaffhausen until 1570, and thereafter until his death in Strasbourg, interrupted by several stays in Baden-Baden. His finest portraits are in the Basel Museum: Jacob Schwytzer and his wife (1564), Thomas Erastus (1582); in Schaffhausen there is the painted decoration of the façade of the house “of the Knight.” In Strasbourg Cathedral, the name of T. S. is linked to the celebrated astronomical clock made between 1571 and 1574 and decorated with paintings and sculptures in a rich complex of allegorical and biblical figures. Fourteen chiaroscuro drawings, executed with great skill and depicting designs for the clock’s moving figures, are held in the Museum of Fine Arts in Strasbourg, where there are also some of the original colored paintings and sculpted figures, which in the Cathedral were replaced in 1842 by those of Philippe Grasse. No trace remains of the frescoes in Baden-Baden Castle after its destruction in 1789. There are, however, many drawings and engravings from which Rubens himself at times drew examples and inspiration, among the most notable being the engravings of the Bible, Livy’s Roman history, and the books of Flavius Josephus. His manner is always incisive and rapid, rich in painterly effects with intense contrasts of light and shadow; in 1580 he also illustrated a comedy of which he himself was the author.
Gemälden in Baden, in Jahrb. der preuss. Kunstsamml., 59 (1938), pp. 247–49; M. Unger, T. S. Austerling, in Schaffhausen Pantheon, 1940, p. 41; F. Lugt, Rubens und S., in The Art Quarterly, 1943, pp. 99–115; P. Boesch, T. S's allegorische Dechengemälde im Schloss zu Baden-Baden (Nachrag), in Zeitschr. für Schweiz. Archäol. und Kunstgesch., 1951, pp. 221–26. Luisa Mortari