Johann Liss

Johann Liss was a German from the far north, born near Oldenburg in Holstein, who became one of the most inventive painters at work in Venice in the 1620s. He got there the long way round, travelling through the Netherlands and Paris before settling in Italy, and he took in everything along the road: the earthy realism of Dutch scenes, the harsh spotlight of the Caravaggio followers he found in Rome, the warm colour of Venice itself.

Out of that mixture came pictures like his Judith and Holofernes, a biblical killing staged in violent light and shadow, alongside softer, glowing scenes from mythology that few painters of the moment could match. His whole career ran little more than a decade.

In 1631 plague was tearing through Venice, and Liss fled to Verona on the mainland to escape it. He died there anyway, still in his thirties. A century later Venetian painters, among them the young Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, were still studying his canvases for their colour.