MIELICH, Hans

Around 1560-70 Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire, shocked by the continuing threats of iconoclasm and, perhaps, chastened by Protestant criticism of religious art, commissioned relatively few new, non-memorial paintings and sculptures for their churches. Most new works were intended for private devotional use. The revival of large-scale Catholic religious art occurred only rarely before the 1580s. One exception was the monumental high altar commissioned by Albrecht V, Duke of Bavaria (r. 1550-79) for the Liebfrauenm�nster in Ingolstadt. Ordered in 1560 to commemorate the centennial of the University of Ingolstadt (1572), whose students worshipped in this church, it was the first true Counter-Reformation altarpiece in Germany. Hans Mielich, Albrecht’s court artist, spent about six years designing the ninety-one different paintings that he and his assistants made for the front and back of this polyptych. It displays a summa of Catholic faith with its insistent emphasis on the Virgin Mary, the church patroness, and, on the reverse, St Catherine of Alexandria, patron of students. In the central panel, the Virgin and Child with angels hover in the air just above the duke and his family. The sculpted Coronation of the Virgin by Hans W�rner (fl. 1576-81) concludes the narrative.

An attractive town hall, scaled according to local needs and finances, became a requisite of most northern European towns in the first half of the fifteenth century. It was the setting for activities ranging from legal and economic deliberations to social events. The great halls and council chambers were often elaborately embellished with images promoting moral rectitude and proper civic behaviour. The miniature by Hans Mielich in the Regensburg Freiheitsbook (folio 2), a book listing legal privileges, shows the council, including artist Albrecht Altdorfer, meeting in its chamber.

Hans Mielich was the leading portrait painter of his period in Munich. This portrait represents Doctor Johann von Schwabbach, princely councilor in Munich, at the age of 71. Von Schwabbach belonged to the entourage of Duke Albrecht V, whose service Mielich worked from 1545.

Ladislaus von Fraunberg (1505-1566) ruled the county of Haag in Upper Bavaria near Wasserburg. Mielich’s portrait is an example of the type of life-size, full-length ruler portrait first created by Lucas Cranach the Elder. With his Portrait of Emperor Karl V, Jacob Seisenegger established an exemplary form of painting for representative purposes that would influence later generations.