DOI article:
Wardzyńska, Katarzyna: Johannes Söffrens (1660-po 1721) - rzeźbiarz niderlandzki w Elblągu: wstęp do monografii
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43437#0161
in ca. 1691, he worked mainly in wood, though at the onset of his career, he received
a number of prestigious commissions for tombs and altars of marble from the Southern
Netherlands combined with English alabaster and limestone from the Baltic Island of
Óland, part of the Swedish territory The skill to work in stone ranks him one of the high-
est- profile sculptors of Royal Prussia from among the generation following Hans Michael
Gockheller, Andreas Schluter II, and Hans Caspar Aschmann. Soffrenss collected oeuvre
encompasses over 50 works (with 2 of them confirmed with archival records), which
makes it one of the largest within this part of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland.
While in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the sculptor had an opportunity to
cooperate with one of the most outstanding architects of his times, his countryman from
the Netherlands, Tilman van Gameren, who helped enhance, though indirectly, the Elbląg
masters artistic background with the knowledge of the most important Baroque Roman
patterns and fashionable French models. It also seems quite certain that during his artis-
tic wondering, Sóffrens stayed in Kónigsberg, this yielding a peculiar type of a slender
multi-storey altar framed with rich acanthus ornament which he created in his early work
and by the end of his artistic activity. It has to be emphasized that Latvian scholars have
from the beginning been vaguely pointing to some Netherlandish elements in the oeuvre
of the whole Sóffrens family. However, in Johannes’s works executed on the territories of
the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth it reached an incomparably higher quality than in
his native Kurland, in the output of his father and younger brother, both called Nicolaus.
Prior to settling in Elbląg, the 30-year-old artist might have been apprenticed to some
of the leading sculpture workshops in the Republic of the United Provinces and the Span-
ish Netherlands. All throughout his homogenous work, Sóffrens, applying his own peculiar
conservative approach, echoed particularly the classicizing and peaceful trend in Flemish
art from half a century before. His style, combining the antiquitizing Roman fine art created
by Franęois du Quesnoy with the elements of the oeuvre of Cornelis van Mildert, Andre de
Nole, Artus Quellinus the Elder of Antwerp, Jana Steen of Mechelen, or Pieter Rijxc of Rot-
terdam. Moreover, he also found major inspiration in abundant painterly and graphic Ital-
ian inventions as well as architectural and sculptural projects of Pieter Paul Rubens. It may
be argued that had Johannes Sóffrens settled in Gdańsk, the centres European contacts and
high competitiveness as well as the high profile of its artists would have motivated him to
accomplish more in his art and continue his personal development. Meanwhile, he chose as
the main territory of his activity Elbląg and the Diocese of Culm (Chełmno) and Pomesa-
nia, still not saturated with artistic works, though in high demand of them. There, following
undoubtedly the best period in his artistic career (1690-1709) the sculptor halted his sty-
listic evolution and just duplicated once elaborated models of altarpieces, pulpits, as well as
ornaments and figures that adorned them, until the end of his career. Many 17th-century art
features lingered in his art, while the step to reach High Baroque in Ducal Prussia was only
taken in the first quarter of the 18th century by his apprentices and followers, mainly Jerzy
Juda Tadeusz Dąbrowicz of Lubawa and Michael Bróse (Brósen) of Elbląg.
Johannes
Sóffrens...
a number of prestigious commissions for tombs and altars of marble from the Southern
Netherlands combined with English alabaster and limestone from the Baltic Island of
Óland, part of the Swedish territory The skill to work in stone ranks him one of the high-
est- profile sculptors of Royal Prussia from among the generation following Hans Michael
Gockheller, Andreas Schluter II, and Hans Caspar Aschmann. Soffrenss collected oeuvre
encompasses over 50 works (with 2 of them confirmed with archival records), which
makes it one of the largest within this part of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland.
While in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the sculptor had an opportunity to
cooperate with one of the most outstanding architects of his times, his countryman from
the Netherlands, Tilman van Gameren, who helped enhance, though indirectly, the Elbląg
masters artistic background with the knowledge of the most important Baroque Roman
patterns and fashionable French models. It also seems quite certain that during his artis-
tic wondering, Sóffrens stayed in Kónigsberg, this yielding a peculiar type of a slender
multi-storey altar framed with rich acanthus ornament which he created in his early work
and by the end of his artistic activity. It has to be emphasized that Latvian scholars have
from the beginning been vaguely pointing to some Netherlandish elements in the oeuvre
of the whole Sóffrens family. However, in Johannes’s works executed on the territories of
the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth it reached an incomparably higher quality than in
his native Kurland, in the output of his father and younger brother, both called Nicolaus.
Prior to settling in Elbląg, the 30-year-old artist might have been apprenticed to some
of the leading sculpture workshops in the Republic of the United Provinces and the Span-
ish Netherlands. All throughout his homogenous work, Sóffrens, applying his own peculiar
conservative approach, echoed particularly the classicizing and peaceful trend in Flemish
art from half a century before. His style, combining the antiquitizing Roman fine art created
by Franęois du Quesnoy with the elements of the oeuvre of Cornelis van Mildert, Andre de
Nole, Artus Quellinus the Elder of Antwerp, Jana Steen of Mechelen, or Pieter Rijxc of Rot-
terdam. Moreover, he also found major inspiration in abundant painterly and graphic Ital-
ian inventions as well as architectural and sculptural projects of Pieter Paul Rubens. It may
be argued that had Johannes Sóffrens settled in Gdańsk, the centres European contacts and
high competitiveness as well as the high profile of its artists would have motivated him to
accomplish more in his art and continue his personal development. Meanwhile, he chose as
the main territory of his activity Elbląg and the Diocese of Culm (Chełmno) and Pomesa-
nia, still not saturated with artistic works, though in high demand of them. There, following
undoubtedly the best period in his artistic career (1690-1709) the sculptor halted his sty-
listic evolution and just duplicated once elaborated models of altarpieces, pulpits, as well as
ornaments and figures that adorned them, until the end of his career. Many 17th-century art
features lingered in his art, while the step to reach High Baroque in Ducal Prussia was only
taken in the first quarter of the 18th century by his apprentices and followers, mainly Jerzy
Juda Tadeusz Dąbrowicz of Lubawa and Michael Bróse (Brósen) of Elbląg.
Johannes
Sóffrens...