Benjamin Block or Blok (1631–1690) was a seventeenth-century

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

- Hungarian Baroque painter who married the flower painter Anna Katharina Block. He is known for his portrait paintings.

Biography

Block was born into an artistic family in

Lübeck Lübeck (; Low German also ), officially the Hanseatic City of Lübeck (german: Hansestadt Lübeck), is a city in Northern Germany. With around 217,000 inhabitants, Lübeck is the second-largest city on the German Baltic coast and in the state ...

;Benjamin von Block
in the

RKD The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD (Dutch: RKD-Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis), previously Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center i ...

his father

Daniel Blok Daniel Blok or Daniel von Block (1580–1660) was a German Baroque painter. Biography According to Houbraken he was the son of Marten Blok of Utrecht. He was sent to learn the art of painting portraits from Jakob Scherer in Gdańsk. He attract ...

and brothers Emanuel and Adolf were painters. In 1653 he was registered in Halle, Belgium, probably en route to Italy, and in 1655, through one of his brothers, who was a canon in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

at the time, he met Ferenc Nádasdy III who invited him to produce art in

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the ...

. He is registered in Hungary from 1656 to 1659. After working as a portrait painter in

Siena Siena ( , ; lat, Sena Iulia) is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the province of Siena. The city is historically linked to commercial and banking activities, having been a major banking center until the 13th and 14th centur ...

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany Regions of Italy, region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilan ...

and

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...

, in 1664 Block crossed the alps back to his native

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

, and settled in

Nuremberg Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...

, where he married the daughter of the flower painter Johann Thomas Fischer (1603–1685), the flower painter Anna Catharina Fischer.Anna Katharina Block
in the

There he made portraits for the margraves of Ansbach and the

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

court until 1670. He was knighted by Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor in 1684. His wife remained a painter after her marriage, and along with their parents, this duo is mentioned in the artist biographies of

Joachim von Sandrart Joachim von Sandrart (12 May 1606 – 14 October 1688) was a German Baroque art-historian and painter, active in Amsterdam during the Dutch Golden Age. He is most significant for his collection of biographies of Dutch and German artists the '' T ...

and Arnold Houbraken. He died in Regensburg in 1690.

References

External links and sources

Fine Arts in Hungary
Hungarian painters 1631 births 1690 deaths Artists from Lübeck German Baroque painters 17th-century German painters {{Hungary-painter-stub