Adam
Elsheimer

From 1600 he lived permanently in Rome, where he attained to fame; was on friendly terms with Rubens, Paul Bril and Peter and Pieter Lastman, later Rembrandt's master.

Pictures of Alzheimera, mostly landscapes of a small size with scenes of biblical or mythological subjects. In the last years of his life, the artist gave preference to night landscapes, lyrical rather than dramatic character.

Adam Elsheimer was a student of Philip Uffenbach, but also experienced in his youth a strong influence of alien masters, who emigrated from the Netherlands, Gillis van koninksloo and Lucas van Valckenborch. Around 1600, the artist settled in Rome, where he was very friendly with Peter Paul Rubens and Paul Brill. Elsheimer wrote little and left a lot of paintings, which nevertheless was highly regarded during his lifetime by collectors and artists, especially in the skilled craftsmanship of the finest designs of light and shade.

Adam Elsheimer is one of the first artists who submitted very accurate celestial sphere. With very high probability we can say that it is 16 June, 1609, at about 21.45 observed in the vicinity of Rome the starry sky through a telescope. His observations it is depicted in the painting "the Flight into Egypt", which is in the Munich Pinakothek. Is scientists have found the Deutsches Museum in 2005. The moon and the stars in the milky way, shown in the picture, correspond to the latitude of Rome.

In this painting, small format, written on a copper Board, presented a scene of Aeneas escaping with his family from the captured and burning with fire of Troy. In the gloom of night, illuminated by torches in the hands of the fleeing fugitives, it is possible to discern the outlines of the fortress, temples, wooden horse of the Greeks. A striking dramatic effect is achieved by the flickering flashes of the disturbing light in the black impenetrable darkness that engulfed the land. A feature of the landscapes of Alzheimera is an illusion the huge extent of space arising from a close Association near and far plans. So, it captures the grandeur and starry sky with a comet flying by, reflected in the surface of a river, endless, bottomless, lying asleep on the ground, over a small group warming themselves around the campfire people on the shore. Peaceful cozy fire glowing in the darkness, and the cold glow of the stars in the sky are mapped and experienced in its own special beauty, great and small, finite and eternal. Thanks chiaroscuro Alzheimer achieves a rare unity and a poetic mood in his works.