Born into a family of painters in the southern Tyrol, Johann Georg Platzer studied first with his stepfather Josef Anton Kessler (d. 1721) and then with his uncle Christoph Platzer, a court painter in Passau.  Probably after 1726, he moved to Vienna and enrolled at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, where he became friends with his fellow countryman, the painter Franz Christoph Janneck (1703–1761).  Platzer quickly established a following for his cabinet paintings, most of them painted on copper, becoming one of the most fashionable painters at the Imperial Court.  From 1728 to 1732, he particularly enjoyed the patronage of Albrecht von Sebisch, a great lover of art, sent on a diplomatic mission to the court in Vienna, who commissioned fourteen paintings from Platzer for his art cabinet in Breslau, Silesia, which Platzer may have visited.  In 1739, Platzer left Vienna and returned to his native South Tyrol, probably due to the deterioration of his health brought on by the onset of Parkinson's disease. He continued, however, to receive commissions from the aristocracy and wealthy bourgeoisie of Vienna. He died in Eppan in 1761.

Painted on a large copper panel, our Painter’s Studio was conceived as a counterpart to A Sculptor’s Studio (oil on copper, 55.5 x 74.9 cm, current location unknown)[i]and signed by the artist I.G. PLATZER. on the pedestal, lower right. The inscription in Cyrillic alphabet И. И: Шуваловa (I.I. Shuvalov) noted on the back of both coppers refers to Ivan Ivanovich Shuvalov (1727-1797).  Nicknamed the “Patron of the Russian Enlightenment”, Shuvalov was an important collector and the favourite of Empress Elizabeth of Russia (1709-1762).  From 1749, he was involved in a romantic relationship with Elizabeth I, despite their age difference and his rivalry with Alexei Razumovsky (1709-1771), another of the Empress’s favourites.  Shuvalov served as Minister of Education, presided with Mikhail Lomonosov over the creation of Moscow State University (1755) and the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg (1757), and governed Russia during the last six years of Elizabeth's reign. In 1758, he gave the Academy part of his own collection of paintings and drawings. Upon the accession of Catherine II of Russia in 1762, he sold his collection of paintings to the new Empress shortly before her departure from Russia in April 1763.  During this fourteen-year journey across Europe, Shuvalov spent six months in Vienna, before visiting Paris and Rome and acquiring works for the Academy and the Hermitage[ii].  Concerning our Painter's Studio and its pendant, the Sculptor's Studio, it cannot be entirely ruled out that in the late 1740s or early 1750s, Shuvalov ordered the two paintings directly from Platzer with the idea of ​​offering them to Elizabeth of Russia since they entered the Russian imperial collections, probably during her lifetime. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, these collections were seized by the Soviet government, which decided to disperse part of them in a series of sales. The pair of paintings in question was sold in Berlin in November 1928, along with other works from the Hermitage, the Michailoff Palace, and the Gatschina Palace in St. Petersburg.

This prestigious provenance undoubtedly explains the ambition deployed by the artist in our Painter's Studio, which reveals itself to be a true Allegory of the Art of Painting, both in its virtuosity of execution and in its iconography, which multiplies the levels of interpretation. With a composition quite similar to The Painter's Studio in the Cleveland Museum of Art (signed lower left: J.G. Platzer, oil on copper, 41.90 x 60 cm)[iii], but with a considerably larger format, our studio reveals itself like a scene in a theatrical drama, introduced by an upswept red velvet curtain on the left and an artist’s articulated mannequin standing on a cupboard.  At its feet is placed a painter's palette and brushes and a piece of fabric used for drapery studies, while in the open cupboard below are the essential materials of painting, such as a bottle of oil and a bowl that most likely contains cochineals used in the production of the pigment carmine red.  The position of the mannequin's arm and hand invites the viewer to enter the studio, which consists of two rooms located inside a palace whose walls and doors are richly embellished with carved architectural decoration.  In the background on the left is the studio itself, where an apprentice is carrying out the tedious task of grinding pigments on a hard stone using a grinding wheel.  Seated at an easel behind him is a painter seen from behind.  Brush in hand, he observes the features of a young woman posing near a window.  Far from faithfully reproducing the reality of her dress and attitude, the live model allows the painter to create an historiated portrait of herself as Lucretia, as indicated by the dagger that the woman in the painted version points towards herself. This detail is important for if the left part of the composition evokes painting in its manual aspect, as a mechanical art, then it is the invention and imagination of the painter that are highlighted elsewhere and which assert themselves with pomp throughout the rest of the painting.

The rest of the studio, which is presented as a princely cabinet d’art adorned with numerous paintings, is populated by a rich company comprising eleven figures of various ages, at the centre of which presides Johann Georg Platzer.  Wearing a blue toque and a green coat trimmed with fur, he gazes at us in a confident manner, his hand resting on the frame of a painting representing The Punishment of Cupid by Venus and Jupiter, which he has placed on a chair upholstered in blue velvet.  Although this painting has not been identified, the artist's face is easily recognisable by comparison with the numerous self-portraits he painted in his other works.  In addition, the painting hanging on the wall behind him is a very close variant of his Rape of Helen, now in Brno (copper, 40.7 x 59.7 cm, Brno, Moravska Gallery)[iv].  Confident in himself and his art, at the height of his social success, the painter subscribes to the lineage of painters who, since the Renaissance, have contributed to the recognition of painting as a noble and intellectual art belonging to the Liberal Arts. The multiplicity of groups of characters present in this studio, together with the abundance of themes addressed by the arrangement of the works of art, offer a reading of abundant complexity in which the allegories of The Five Senses, the Ages of Man, moral considerations on love and marriage, and references to the history of painting and the hierarchy of genres overlap and intertwine.

Symbol of the childhood of art and the apprenticeship of the painter, a young boy sits on the floor beside a drawer filled with drawings from which a red chalk portrait of a man emerges. In one hand, he holds an academic study of a man seen from behind, made in black chalk, and in the other, a propelling pencil.  Next to him, a little girl points at an engraving in which we can make out Adam and Eve and a scene of the Original Sin.  The second engraving on the floor bears the name B. Spranger and allows Platzer to claim the affiliation of his style with that of Bartholomeus Spranger (1546-1611), the most illustrious representative of late Mannerism in the Prague School at the court of Rudolf II.  Even though the upper part with Cupid is cut off, the engraving is perfectly recognisable as that made by Pieter de Jode I after Spranger's drawing, Mercury embracing Venus, dated around 1598 (Basle, Kunstmuseum, Kupferstichkabinett)[v]. The choice of this rather unusual subject of Mercury, god of eloquence, associated with the goddess of love, is explained by its meaning, which makes the pleasure of marriage reside in the sweetness of conversation.  Platzer seems to make this print resonate with the couple of lovers, who are seated nearby with their forearms intertwined and an open book resting on their knees. The young man points to the page containing the central argument of the painting presented by the artist to the assembly.  This is a reference to Ut pictura poesis – “as is painting so is poetry (Horace)” - the concept revived during the Renaissance that recognised the close relationship between poetry and painting as ‘sister arts’, and the notion that the poetic source of painting makes the painter the equal of the poet.  The hands of this young couple evoke the sense of Touch, while the woman with the lute is accompanied by her lover, Hearing; the old art lover with glasses who examines the painting, Sight; while Smell is evoked on the right by the wine poured by the old woman for the middle-aged man, and Taste by the maid bringing the fruit platter. With this theme of The Five Senses, Platzer pays homage to the masters of the past and deliberately places his art within the continuity of the history of seventeenth-century Flemish painting, like the paintings that adorn the walls. The oval genre scene representing a couple in a tavern, evoking venal love, is in the style of David Teniers the Younger (1610-1690), while the portrait of a couple facing each other in the style of Rubens (1577-1640) offers a vision of marital love. Below, the bouquet of flowers in a stone niche and the still life with fruit and a parrot placed above the door also appear to be a tribute to Flemish painting of the Baroque period, so well represented in Viennese collections. The animated landscape would seem rather to evoke contemporary French painting such as that of François Boucher (1703-1770). This diversity of subjects evokes the theory of genres which through the establishment of academies in the seventeenth century developed into a hierarchy of the genres of painting in five categories: it distinguished the "grand genre", that is to say history painting, from the secondary genres, namely portraiture, genre, landscape and finally still-life painting. By choosing to represent himself as an author of mythological subjects, Platzer places himself resolutely at the top of the hierarchy whilst proving that he is also master of the other genres as well.

The desire for completeness evident in this complete inventory of the genres of painting and the techniques of drawing, is expressed right down to the smallest details as, for example, in the variety of frames in differing styles. This ideal vision of the painter's studio that exudes the ambiance of social life and eighteenth-century salon conversation, is augmented by the easily recognisable and highly characteristic style of Platzer's work. Thanks to the use of a copper support, the colours are rendered all the more vivid and brilliant with an almost enamel-like finish. The emphasis is placed on the virtuosity of the touch, visible in the draperies and in the smooth treatment of the flesh.  Marked by a horror vacui and a love of sensual pleasure, a formal as well as a spiritual sophistication, this Painter's Studio confirms the major position occupied by Platzer in Viennese Rococo painting.