Weyer

Long little-known in the history of art, Hermann Weyer was successively studied by Hanna Mayer, Adalbert Bringmann and Heinrich Geissler, and more recently the subject of a doctoral dissertation by Christine Wolff¹.The son of the painter Hans Weyer – active in Coburg from 1595 under Duke Johann Casimir – Hermann was also the brother of Hans Weyer the Younger, who is recorded until 1666 as a portrait painter. Weyer may have trained within his family, though no other master is known. A familial connection with Gabriel Weyer has been proposed, but remains unproven.

His precocious talent, revealed through high-quality drawings dated 1605, long intrigued art historians, who suspected an error. It was however confirmed when Peter Germann Bauer published a Crucifixion preserved in the parish church of Neuhaus-Schierschnitz, signed and dated 1609 by Weyer, who also stated his age of thirteen. In this composition, the young artist reworked an engraving by A. Sadeler after Ch. Schwartz for the upper section, enriching it with the presence of donors.

Despite this work and a few others, only a small number of paintings by Weyer are known today, in contrast with the several dozen drawings that survive. The most substantial group is held by the Öffentliche Kunstsammlung in Basel, which preserves numerous sheets from the artist’s youth. Copying formed part of his practice as a graphic exercise – many drawings after Jost Amman, Barthel Beham and Georg Pencz are known – but he appears to have pursued it later also for commercial purposes; such is the case of his Judgment of Midas at the Getty Museum, a highly refined, signed and dated sheet after Hendrick van Balen’s painting in Stuttgart. In certain drawings, such as the Holy Family in Washington or Saint Luke Painting the Virgin (1614, formerly with Kate Ganz), he adopts a contrasting technique, with dark tonalities boldly heightened with white, seemingly seeking to rival the effects of woodcuts.

In the more mature period of his career, his drawings attain remarkable refinement, forming complete compositions, at times highly original, and most often signed or monogrammed – sometimes both, as in the present sheet. In this composition, one of the artist’s finest, Sculpture, Painting, Music, Astronomy, Geometry, Medicine and Architecture advance with their attributes under the protection of a soldier or knight, probably Fortitude or Virtue Triumphans, who triumphs over an evil figure with long ears, Ignorance or Folly. The scene is probably a complex humanist allegory praising the wise government of a prince and patron of the arts, whose enlightened leadership allows the development of the arts. The presence of a city in the background supports this hypothesis. Weyer combines Mannerist references – the rounded heads and sinuous poses of the allegories recall Goltzius or Spranger – with an emerging interest in a more naturalistic tone in the central figure. The composition recalls that of Bartolomeus Spranger’s Minerva victorious over Ignorance (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum), engraved by Aegidius Sadeler, although in our drawing the armed figure is clearly a male one. The artist may also play on the possible visual confusion of his figure with Saint Michael fighting evil, a motif very frequently depicted in paintings or sculptures in Bavarian churches. The winged genius who brings the fighter a laurel wreath and a sort of palm also recalls the angels who offer saints the symbols of martyrdom.

According to the inscription on the reverse of the old mount, this drawing belonged to Achille Ryhiner-Delon, a prominent figure in Basel and the author of the Alphabetical Itinerary of the City of Basel, Its Surroundings and Its Canton, for the Use of Curious Travellers (1782), as well as the Essay of a Catalogue Raisonné of My Drawings (1785), preserved at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, which includes artist biographies and copies of his drawings (see Lugt 2164 and 3004b, L.4399 and L.4400). A large part of the Italian and Dutch drawings in his collection was sold between 1805 and 1812 by his daughter, Jeanne Burckhardt, née Ryhiner. The few sheets that remained for a century in that branch of the family were bequeathed to the Basel museum by the collector’s great-grandson, Dr. Achille Burckhardt-Blau. His other daughter, Elisabeth Iselin, née Ryhiner, was unwilling to part with her share, and it was only at the beginning of the twentieth century that drawings from this branch appeared at auction, in Basel. This drawing was still in Basel in 1985, where it was estimated by the art dealer Georges Segal.