Johann Paul Schor

Johann Paul Schor (1615–1674), known in Rome as "Giovanni Paolo Tedesco" (Tedesco literally means German in Italian), was an Austrian artist. He was the preeminent designer of decorative arts in Baroque Rome, providing drawings for state beds, fireworks, coaches, silver, textiles and even banquet setpieces executed in sugar. His numerous drawings have often been attributed in the past to Bernini.

Born in Innsbruck, he was a member of an extended Tyrolese artistic family, who received his training in the active studio of his father, Hans Schor. In 1640 he established himself in Rome. There, in 1654, he became a member of the Accademia di San Luca, the artists' academy.

Influenced by Bernini and Pietro da Cortona, the originality of his designs and his versatility gained him a prominent position among artists, patrons and craftsmen in Rome: "he united in his work the highly expressive artistic legacies of Cortona and Bernini with a calligraphic freedom, apparently stemming from Callot and Stefano Della Bella, which at times seems to foreshadow the rococo" (Hibbard 1958:205.) Under Cortona he helped decorate the Palazzo del Quirinale for Pope Alexander VII Chigi. In 1659, the pope also commissioned Schor to execute Bernini's designs for rebuilding of the Chigi family chapel (Capella della Madonna del Voto in the Duomo di Siena. In Rome, Schor assisted Bernini, in the gilt-bronze encasing of the Chair of Saint Peter (Lanciani 1892), and other projects in the late 1650s and 1660s. (Hibbar 1958:205 note 10). Perhaps his most prominent undertaking was the baldacchino in Santo Spirito in Sassia.

Schor also helped decorate rooms of the Vatican and in Palazzo Borghese, where he collaborated with Carlo Rainaldi on the fountain for the nympheum in the courtyard, depicting Venus at the Bath. He supplied illusionistic quadratura suggesting sculptural enframements for ceilings at Palazzo Colonna, (1665-1668), where the painted subjects were provided by Giovanni Coli and Filippo Gherardi.

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