Balthasar denner wikipedia

German painter

Balthasar Denner (15 November – 14 April ) was a German painter, highly regarded as a portraitist.^[2] He painted mostly half-length and head-and-shoulders portraits and a few group portraits of families in interiors.^[3] Usually Denner concentrated on the face; clothes and paraphernalia were done by other painters or later his daughter.^[4] His chief peculiarity consisted in the fineness of his mechanical finish, which extended to depicting even the almost invisible furze of hair growing on smooth skin. He is particularly noted for his heads of old men and women.^[5]

Life

Denner was born in the city of Altona, now incorporated into Hamburg. At the time Altona was part of the Danish kingdom, its second largest city after Copenhagen and famous for its religious tolerance. His father Jacob Denner was a Mennonite minister and a dyer.^[6] Balthasar had seven sisters; he was the only son.^[7] When he was eight years old he had an accident and for the rest of his life he walked with a limp.^[7] His convalescence was slow and to cope with boredom Denner started to draw and copy paintings by Berchem and Bloemaert.^[8] His teacher was a Dutchman, Frans van Amama

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