!!!Hinterglasmalerei

Eglomise Painting, painting technique in which colours impervious to 
light (water colours, tempera, oil or mixed) paints are applied to the 
rear side of thin glass panels (initially streaky greenish Waldglas, 
i.e. glass made in small woodland workshops), producing a particularly 
brilliant image under incident light. In contrast with the normal 
sequence of painting phases, the craftsman first applies the 
foreground (contours, lettering) and shadings, followed by the medium 
hues and finally the background and backing. The technique involves 
partial gilding (garments, aureolas), metal coating of unpainted 
surfaces with tin foil or mercury, masking the backing with soot and 
linseed oil, cutting contour drawings into gold or silver backings and 
setting "eglomise etchings" in finely-etched mirror frames. Eglomise 
painting has been known since the 14th century and serial production 
started in Italy in the 16th century. From the mid-17th century, 
workshop manufacturing was increasingly practised in the Alpine 
regions, Bohemia, the Bavarian Forest, Upper Austria, the 
Mediterranean countries and Eastern Europe. The workshops were 
operated in conjunction with glass factories, and the high-quality 
works of art produced in earlier periods were superseded by 
mass-produced paintings based on standard patterns of an expressive 
and naive nature. Centres in Austria were Sandl, Buchers, Schwertberg 
and Karlstift in the Waldviertel region. Eglomise paintings, mostly 
with religious and popular motifs, were produced in a kind of cottage 
industry and distributed to all the countries of the Monarchy by 
"Kraner" (hawkers from Carniola (Krajna), South Tirol, the 
Palatinate, the Odenwald region and the Bavarian Forest). They were 
set up as devotional pictures in house chapels, roadside shrines and 
in the corners of the farmhouse living-rooms and have become valuable 
collectors' items. In the 1970s, eglomise painting was revived by 
artisans organising courses for amateur painters. There is a 
"Hinterglasmuseum" at Sandl, and the "Muehlviertler 
Heimathaus" local heritage museum at Freistadt, Upper Austria, 
the Upper Austrian Provincial Museum and the Austrian Folklore Museum 
(Oesterreichisches Museum fuer Volkskunde) in Vienna have numerous 
specimens on display.

!Literature
G. M. Ritz, Hinterglasmalerei, 1972; L. Schmidt, 
Hinterglas, 1972; R. Schuster, Risse zu Hinterglas-Bildern aus dem 18. 
und 19. Jahrhundert, 1978; F. Knaipp, Hinterglas-Kuenste, 1988.


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