Self-portrait of the Flemish painter Bartholomeus Spranger. The size of the picture is 62.5 x 45 cm, canvas, oil. The portrait was written by Spranger at the age of about forty years in the heyday of his work. Bartolomeus Spranger was born on March 21, 1546 in Antwerp. From a young age he studied at the workshops of Antwerp painters Jan Mandeyn and Cornelis van Dalem.
At the age of nineteen, after completing the course, Spranger went on a trip, first to Lyon and Paris, then to Italy. From the beginning of the seventies of the 16th century, Spranger worked as a papal painter in the Vatican. In 1575, on the recommendation of his old friend Giovanni Bologna, being already a well-known artist, Bartolomeus Spranger was invited to the position of the court painter of Emperor Maximilian II to Vienna.
After the death of Maximilian from 1581 Bartolomeus Spranger worked as a court painter at the residence of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II in Prague. In the mature period of his work in Prague, Bartolomeus Spranger began to use new pictorial techniques, through which he performed very complex artwork.
At Vienna and Prague courtyards at the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century, a great many foreign painters from all over Europe worked. For many of these artists, Bartolomeus Spranger was the inspiration for new ideas, asserting his passion for Mannerism, the style of painting is sophisticated-flexible, masterly, original and luxurious.
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