SCHOR, Johann Paul

Johann Paul Schor (in Italy Giovanni Paolo Tedesco), Austrian painter and decorator, part of a family of artists of German origin. Hans Schor (1585-1674), probably the son of the portrait painter Johann Schor, was a versatile painter and designer in Innsbruck in the earlier 17th century. His three sons, Johann Paul Schor, Bonaventura Schor (1624-1692) and Egid Schor (1627-1701), trained as painters in Rome, where Johann Paul and Egid worked on frescoes in the Palazzo del Quirinale under Pietro da Cortona.

Johann Paul remained in Rome, executing a wide range of designs and producing frescoes, but his brothers returned to Austria, where both worked as fresco painters, Egid Schor producing perspective and illusionistic frescoes that introduced the Roman High Baroque to the Tyrol. Johann Paul’s sons Philipp Schor (b. 1646) and Christoph Schor (1655-1701) were architects working in Rome. Egid’s son Johann Ferdinand Schor (1686-1767) executed frescoes and designed gardens, but was best known as a lecturer and writer on engineering.

Johann Paul Schor presumably trained with his father in Innsbruck before transferring to Rome c. 1640. In 1654 he was elected a member of the Accademia di San Luca. Although Schor painted large altarpieces, for example that of the Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels for the Mariahilfkirche, Innsbruck (1647-60), he worked primarily on decorative projects, producing designs for theatre, religious festivals, liturgical objects and furniture. The elaborate state coaches for the entrance of Queen Christina of Sweden into Rome were built according to his design (1655).

From 1656 onwards, Schor’s name appears regularly in the papal accounts. He served under three consecutive popes, Alexander VII Chigi (reg. 1655-67), Clement IX Rospigliosi (reg. 1667-69) and Clement X Altieri (reg. 1670-76), designing such objects as the mitre used for the coronation of Pope Clement X (1670). The ornamental details on Bernini’s Cathedra Petri, St Peter’s, in particular the foliage, have also been attributed to him (1660s).

Schor’s painted work includes frescoes executed under the direction of Pietro da Cortona, possibly in collaboration with his younger brother Egid Schor, in the Palazzo Quirinale, where the scenes Noah’s Ark, Jacob and the Angel and Jacob Sold by his Brethren in the Gallery of Alexander VII are generally attributed to him (1656).

The quadratura setting for the frescoed scenes by Giovanni Coli and Filippo Gherardi in the Galleria of the Palazzo Colonna is also his (1665-68). Schor left few paintings or frescoes in Roman churches; exceptions are the frescoes St Peter in Prison, the Virgin and Child and figures of several saints in the second chapel to the left in Santa Caterina da Siena a Magnanapoli.

The powerful Colonna family had lived on the western slope of the Quirinale in Rome since the Middle Ages. Over the years it managed to link together the various houses it had built and purchased over time into a unified ensemble of palaces, courtyards, and gardens. In the seventeenth century, the art-loving cardinal Girolamo I Colonna (1604-1666) began turning the complex into a Baroque residence. Construction began in 1650. The south wing, containing the Grande Galleria, was built between 1661 and 1700 at the behest of the cardinal’s nephew Lorenzo Onofrio (1637-1689).

The most important room in the palace is the gallery (Grande Galleria) on the second floor of the south wing. It is more than a story and a half in height, and it receives light from both sides. It has two separate anterooms, marked off from the main space by pairs of columns. These extensions and the wall arrangements of the room with large pilasters produced the most magnificent secular space from the Roman Baroque.

The painting of the gallery was begun in 1665 and lasted until 1685. The pictorial program unfolds in the vaults of the trio of rooms and it is supplemented to this day with the original statues, paintings, and elaborate furnishings. The architecture painting and framing is by Johann Paul Schor and his workshop, the narrative cycle on Marcantonio II Colonna is by Giovanni Coli and Filippo Gherardi, two painters from Lucca working as an inseparable team. The scenes on the ceiling illustrate decisive events from the military career of Marcantonio II Colonna (1535-1584). In its form and composition the narrative cycle borrows from sixteenth-century Venetian painting, which beginning with Veronese had specialised in depictions on ceilings of historical events viewed from extremely low vantage points.

View of the Grande Galleria