Artist
Friedrich Christoph Steinhammer
German, d. 1622
Friedrich Christoph Steinhammer was a German Early Baroque Italian artist. 1 work is cataloged here, principally at Detroit Institute of Arts.
Always in a hurry, Steinhammer painted on the sly between chores, his studio was the corner table at an Augsburg tavern where the light hit just right. He made a habit of sneaking into classical plays, sketching the crowd’s faces straight onto canvas, then weaving those strangers into history paintings as if they’d lived it. His Rape of the Sabine Women (1622) looks like a backstage scene from that same play: a Roman soldier in a feathered hat mid-grab, while the Sabine women seem more annoyed than terrified. See it and you’ll never trust a myth again.
Works by Friedrich Christoph Steinhammer
Collections represented
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