Porträt Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach. On the sheet is the Middle German composer Johann Sebastian Bach in the upper half and the Bach monument in Leipzig in the lower half of the picture. Bach is shown to the right as a chest pattern in the half profile. He wears simple clothes and wig. He presents the viewer, whom he looks at in a challenging way, a sheet of music from him, unfortunately it is not very readable. To the left of him in the background is the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, where Bach worked as a Thomaskantor. To the right of Bach is an observatory of Leipzig, the tower of the observatory on Pleißenburg. The lower part of the picture shows the school building of the Thomasschule in Leipzig, where Bach gave music lessons and is said to have lived. In front of the building is still depicted the Bach monument, which was donated by composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, designed by Eduard Bendemann, Ernst Rietschel and Julius Hübner and executed by the Leipzig sculptor Hermann Knaur. In 1843 it was consecrated. It is considered the oldest Bach monument in Germany. This is an octagonal sandstone base on which the monument is built in the shape of a house. Bach’s face can be seen in one of the four view surfaces. In addition to his employment in Leipzig, Johann Sebastian Bach worked in Lüneburg, Weimar, Arnstadt, Mühlhausen, Weimar and Köthen. During one of these trips, Bach assessed the large organ in the market church in Halle/Saale in 1716 and wrote an extensive assessment of the instrument. The leaf was executed as steel engraving by Albert Henry Payne. The lower part of the picture suggests the use of other etching techniques. Other copies of the paper are in the British Museum in London and the Austrian National Library in Vienna. Signature: H. Bibby, pinx. A. H. Payne, sc. The London Printing And Publishing Company. Caption: John Sebastian Bach. with Views of The St. Thomas“s School, Bach”s Monument, St. Thomas' s Church, & Observatory at Leipzig. (Stiftung Händel-Haus Halle Foundation)