BOCKSBERGER, Hans the Elder

Austrian painter, designer and woodcutter, part of a family of artists. The Salzburg painter Ulrich Bocksberger (active 1490–1518) probably trained his son Hans Bocksberger the Elder. The son of the latter, Hans Bocksberger the Younger (active 1564–79), has been confused with Melchior Bocksberger (c. 1532-1587), leading to the composite coinage of ‘Johann Melchior Bocksberger’. Melchior was in fact probably the nephew of Hans Bocksberger the Elder. Hans the Younger, who is documented in Vienna by 1579, is best known for the woodcut plates he made for Jost Amman.

Hans the Elder is chiefly known for his Renaissance-style decorative wall and ceiling paintings executed for the state rooms of princes, but he presumably also worked as a painter of façades and of portraits. The painting (1536) of the great hall in Goldegg Castle near Radstatt, Salzburg is ascribed to him purely on grounds of style. In 1542-43 he painted the interior of the (Protestant) Schlosskapelle at Neuburg an der Donau for Elector Otto Henry of the Palatinate. In the same period he worked with Ludwig Refinger and Hermann Posthumus on the interior decoration of the Residenz at Landshut, being the best-paid painter. The decorative forms and the style of the figures are indebted to Giulio Romano’s paintings in the Palazzo del Tè at Mantua (he may also have visited Rome). Though his approach was very laboured, he showed himself a dedicated disciple of the Raphael school, then the height of modernity.