Lot 202 Dα

Johann Michael Wittmer spent over 50 years of his life in the Eternal City as of 1828 and belonged to the circle of German artists and authors living in Rome in the late 18th and 19th century, known as "Deutschrömer". In 1833 he married the eldest daughter of Joseph Anton Koch, the intellectual leader of this circle. Wittmer considered himself a narrative painter, and he worked on historical, mythological and religious themes in a manner stylistically indebted to that of the Nazarenes. The present work depicting the four great Doctors of the Church is a product of his late phase in the 1860s. "He painted the four figures in 1864, clothed in liturgical dress and with individualised features, on separate panels mounted in a gilt arcade frame." (Salmen op. cit., p. 185).