Melchior Steidl
Austrian, 1657-1727
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Born in Innsbruck in 1657, Steidl was trained by the Munich court painter Johann Andreas Wolff (1652-1716). He became a master in Munich in 1687, and after marrying the daughter of the painter Hans Michael Tobrias (Dobries), he joined the painter's guild there in 1688. Starting with the collaboration with his fellow Tyrolean Johann Anton Gumpp (1654-1719) in painting at St. Florian (1690-95), Steidl executed frescoes in Lower and Upper Austria, for example, at the Benedictine monasteries of Kremsmünster (1696) and Lambach (1698-99). His center of activity then moved to Bavaria, where he worked in the Carmelite church in Straubing in 1702, and in the Obermünster in Regensburg in 1704.
Later he received important commission for frescoes in Franconia, at Würzburg (1706), Bamberg (1707-09), and Banz (1716). Sites elsewhere where he worked include the Schöneberg near Ellwangen (1711-12) and the St. Moritz church in Augsburg (1706, 1714-15). Steidl may thus be considered the most important representative of the school of fresco painters resident in Munich around 1700, as well as the initiator of the eighteenth-century tradition in Augsburg. He died in Munich on August 4, 1727.