Georges Desmarées, studio of
Clemens August of Bavaria, Archbishop and Prince Elector of Cologne
Oil on canvas (relined). 148.5 x 111 cm.
Clemens August (1700-1761) of the Bavarian house Wittelsbach superseded his uncle as Archbishop and Prince Elector of Cologne in 1723. At this point he was already Bishop of Münster and Paderborn and later attained the bishophrics of Hildesheim and Osnabrück and the title of Grand Master of the Teutonic Order. This was an astonishing accumulation of titles, even for his times.
Clemens August appointed Georges Desmarées as painter to the electoral court in 1745. "The most important portrait painter of the German Rococo" (Laurentius Koch in NDB, vol. 16, Berlin 1990, p. 144), he developed a new and representative type of three-quarter length portrait showing Clemens August as Grand Master of the Teutonic Order. This motif bears no references to the Elector's clerical titles, and is referred to by M. Miersch as the "first Desmarée Grand Master type" (Martin Miersch: Das Bild des Electeur Soleil, Marburg 2007, p. 25). Although the first version of this type is no longer known, several copies exist which "in their high quality, format and composition indicate serial production of the highest order" (Miersch op. cit., p. 26 and footnote 18). The present work is one of these copies, and others are kept in the Stadtmuseum in Münster, the Museum für Angewandte Kunst in Cologne and the Stadtmuseum Bonn.
Provenance
Prof. Dr. Wendelstadt, Bonn-Bad Godesberg, Redoute. – Lempertz auction 606, Cologne, 20.-22.5.1985, lot 98. - Collection of Joachim Maas, Cologne.