PLATZER, Johann Georg

Austrian painter and draughtsman. He came from a family of painters in South Tyrol, studying first with his stepfather Josef Anton Kessler (d. 1721) and then with his uncle Christoph Platzer, court painter in Passau. In 1724 he painted an altarpieceGLOSSARYA picture or sculpture that stands on or is set up behind an altar. The term reredos is used for an ornamental screen or partition, not directly attached to the altar table but affixed to the wall behind it. A diptych is an altarpiece consisting of two panels, a triptych one of three panels, and a polyptych one of four or more panels. From the 14th to 16th century, the altarpiece was one of the most important commissions in European art; it was through the altarpiece that some of the most decisive developments in painting and sculpture came about. for the church of St Helena in Deutschnofen. Probably after 1726 he went to Vienna, where he enrolled at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste and became a friend of Franz Christoph Janneck. Perhaps because of a stroke that impeded his work, he returned to St Michael in Eppan by 1755.

Platzer produced a great number of small paintings, mostly on copper. He was the most important master of the conversation piece in 18th-century Austria, and his cultivated embourgeoisé public was fascinated by the virtuoso manner, lively colours and innumerable details of his compositions. According to the principles of decorum, he chose his models and style to suit the subject-matter: for histories and allegories he took his models from antiquity, the Renaissance and Italian and Flemish BaroqueGLOSSARYThe period in art history from about 1600 to about 1750. In this sense the term covers a wide range of styles and artists. In painting and sculpture there were three main forms of Baroque: (1) sumptuous display, a style associated with the Catholic Counter Reformation and the absolutist courts of Europe (Bernini, Rubens); (2) dramatic realism (Caravaggio); and (3) everyday realism, a development seen in particular in Holland (Rembrandt, Vermeer). In architecture, there was an emphasis on expressiveness and grandeur, achieved through scale, the dramatic use of light and shadow, and increasingly elaborate decoration. In a more limited sense the term Baroque often refers to the first of these categories. The development of the Baroque reflects the period's religious tensions (Catholic versus Protestant); a new and more expansive world view based on science and exploration; and the growth of absolutist monarchies. art, as in Samson's Revenge (Vienna, Belvedere).

In his genreGLOSSARYIn a broad sense, the term is used to mean a particular branch or category of art; landscape and portraiture, for example, are genres of painting, and the essay and the short story are genres of literature. scenes and especially his conversation pieces, influences of the French RococoGLOSSARYA style of design, painting, and architecture dominating the 18th century, often considered the last stage of the Baroque. Developing in the Paris townhouses of the French aristocracy at the turn of the 18th century, Rococo was elegant and ornately decorative, its mood lighthearted and witty. Louis XV furniture, richly decorated with organic forms, is a typical product. Leading exponents of the Rococo sryle included the French painters Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) and Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806), and the German architect Johann Balthasar Neumann (1687-1753). Rococo gave way to Neo-classicism. and the Netherlandish cabinetGLOSSARYA small, private room where works of art, valuables and curiosities were kept and contemplated at leisure; over time the term was used for the collections themselves. Renaissance cabinets played an important role in the development of museums and art galleries. painters are evident, while in his scenes of artists' studios, such as Sculptor's Workshop (Vienna, Hististorisches Museum), his academic knowledge is revealed. The repeated use of architectural motifs in his work is derived from northern Italian quadraturaGLOSSARYA type of illusionistic decoration in which architectural elements are painted on walls and/or ceilings in such a way that they appear to be an extension of the real architecture of a room into an imaginary space. It was common in Roman art, was revived by Mantegna in the 15th century, and reached its peaks of elaboration in Baroque Italy. The greatest of all exponents of quadratura was probably Pozzo, in whose celebrated ceiling in S. Ignazio, Rome, architecture and figures surge towards the heavens with breathtaking bravura. Unlike Pozzo, many artists relied on specialists called quadraturisti to paint the architectural settings for their figures (see Guercino and Tiepolo, for example). painting. Although his work is eclectic, it has a characteristic personal touch that distinguishes it from the comparable, though calmer and less detailed work of Janneck.