Gottfried Wals, or Goffredo Wals (c. 1595 – 1638) was a German painter who spent most of his career in Italy. He was sometimes referred to as Goffredo Tedesco (Goffredo the German).

Biography

Little is known about his early life, except that he was born in

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 m ...

. He wandered about through numerous Italian cities, including

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

and

Genoa Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the List of cities in Italy, sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian ce ...

; arriving in Rome around 1615. There, he became an assistant to

Agostino Tassi Agostino Tassi (born Agostino Buonamici; 1578 – 1644) was an Italian landscape and seascape painter, who was convicted of raping Artemisia Gentileschi in 1612. Because he aspired to nobility he modified the details of his early life. Though ...

, a harsh master who attacked him with blows from a club and was briefly imprisoned in 1616, when Wals filed a complaint. The following year, he lived with the newly arrived

Massimo Stanzione Massimo Stanzione (also called Stanzioni; 1585 – 1656) was an Italian Baroque painter, mainly active in Naples, where he and his rival Jusepe de Ribera dominated the painting scene for several decades. He was primarily a painter of altarpiece ...

, in the Roman quarter of

Trastevere Trastevere () is the 13th ''rione'' of Rome: it is identified by the initials R. XIII and it is located within Municipio I. Its name comes from Latin ''trans Tiberim'', literally 'beyond the Tiber'. Its coat of arms depicts a golden head of a lio ...

. From 1620 to 1622,

Claude Lorrain Claude Lorrain (; born Claude Gellée , called ''le Lorrain'' in French; traditionally just Claude in English; c. 1600 – 23 November 1682) was a French painter, draughtsman and etcher of the Baroque era. He spent most of his life in It ...

was an occasional student of his. In 1623, he was back in Genoa with

Antonio Travi Antonio Travi (1613–1668) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period. He was born in Sestri, near Genoa, was generally known as ''Il Sordo di Sestri'' on account of his deafness. He was originally a color-grinder to Bernardo Strozzi, who in ...

as his student. Most of his works were in small format, often circular and painted on copper. His interest in

composition Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature *Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography *Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include v ...

and lighting is very marked and often bears resemblance to the works of

Filippo Napoletano Filippo Napoletano, whose real name was Filippo Teodoro di Liagno (or Teodoro Filippo de Liagno) (c. 1587-89 – November 1629) was an Italian artist, with a varied output, mainly landscape and genre scenes and also drawings or etchings of di ...

, who was in turn a follower of

Adam Elsheimer __NOTOC__ Adam Elsheimer (18 March 1578 – 11 December 1610) was a German artist working in Rome, who died at only thirty-two, but was very influential in the early 17th century in the field of Baroque paintings. His relatively few paintin ...

. Few works of his have come down to us. His

Catalogue raisonné A ''catalogue raisonné'' (or critical catalogue) is a comprehensive, annotated listing of all the known artworks by an artist either in a particular medium or all media. The works are described in such a way that they may be reliably identified ...

contains only twenty-five works that have been definitely identified as painted by him. In comparison, it is known that, in 1634, the Belgian-born merchant,

Gaspard De Roomer Gaspar Roomer (Antwerp, between 1596 and 1606 - Naples, 3 April 1674) was a prominent Flemish merchant, banker, art patron and art collector who was active in Naples in the 17th century. Biography Born in Antwerp, he lived for at least four deca ...

(c.1600–1674) of Naples, owned sixty of his landscapes and fourteen drawings. He most probably died in

Calabria , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographics1_title2 ...

, during or shortly after the earthquake of 27 March 1638, which killed almost 10,000 people.Giovanna Capitelli, "Il paesaggio italianizzante", in; ''La pittura di paesaggio in Italia''.

References

External links

More works by Wals
@ ArtNet {{DEFAULTSORT:Wals, Gottfried 1590s births 1638 deaths German emigrants to Italy German landscape painters 17th-century German painters

Biography

References

Further reading

External links