Po co artysta rysuje? Kilka uwag na temat funkcji rysunku w twórczości Michaela Willmanna

English Title: Why did an artist make drawing? Some remarks on the function of Michael Willmann’s drawings

In: Żuchowski, Tadeusz J. (Hrsg.): Disegno – rysunek u źródeł sztuki nowożytnej [Materiały z sesji naukowej w Toruniu, 26-27 X 2000]. Torun 2001, pp. 211-227

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Translation of abstract (English)

Samuel Hoogstraten recounted in his "Goote Schouburgh..." an anecdote when Francois Knibbergen, Jan van Goyen and Jan Porcellis had competed to see who could complete the most beautiful painting in the course of a day. Although three painters went about their work in three different ways, none of them used preparatory drawings. This anecdote seems to reflect not only working processes of some seventeenth-century Dutch artist, but Michael Willmann’s working methods as well. The necessity of prompt coping with the flood of orders made Willmann extremely simplify the process of production of a standard religious picture. Most of large-format canvases meant for church interiors were left in the form of rough sketches and the inventive phase of the work was no less simplified by the extensive use of the artist’s collection of graphic models. Noteworthy is the fact that only two Willmann’s preparatory drawings are known: "Six days of Creation" and "The ancestors of St. Joseph" So we can assume, that Willmann made compositional drawings for his pictures only sporadically, in special cases, while his staple procedure was to make a contour sketch directly on the grounded surface of the painting as Rembrandt used to do. German artist seems to have made more often drawings which were supposed to complete the workshop bank of graphic models. Among these drawings were copies, sketches ("Inventionis") and models of a single human figure, such as "A sitting woman with studies of feet", and also drawing sets of "prototypes" of heads and other elements of human body, known to us from drawings made by Willmann’s associate, Johann Eybelwieser. Willmann presented the projects of pictures to the not-Leubus customers using the means of drawings on paper. These drawings, called "Entwurff-s", like the Berlinian "Assumption of Mary" or Vienna’s "Christ healing the sick", had relatively completed form and were often made on blue paper. Willmann also demonstrated his artistic skilIs as a draughtsman by the means of drawn projects to engravings made by mainly Augsburger and Nürnberger engravers and autonomous drawings like large "The adoration of Mary as Queen and Empress", ordered by the cardinal Friedrich von Hessen, and "Apotheosis of Joachim von Sandrart", which was sent by Willmann to the author of "Teutsche Academie...". These highly elaborated autonomous drawings brought Willmann an international fame.