Jakob Emanuel Handmann
1718–1781 · Switzerland · Rococo, Portraiture
The story
If you have ever seen a portrait of the mathematician Leonhard Euler, the Basel-born genius who reshaped much of modern mathematics, you have probably seen the work of Jakob Emanuel Handmann. His 1753 portrait of Euler, showing the scholar heavy-faced and turned slightly away, became the standard image of the man.
Handmann was from Basel himself, born there in 1718 into a large family. He trained in Schaffhausen, then spent three years in Paris in the studio of Jean Restout, a leading French painter, and went on to Rome before returning home. He settled in Bern and became the busy portraitist of Enlightenment Switzerland, working in oil and in pastel, the powdery chalk medium prized for soft skin and fabric.
His sitters were the scholars, officials and clergymen of the Swiss towns, among them the celebrated Bern poet and naturalist Albrecht von Haller. He died in Bern in 1781.
