Spanish Netherlands 18th century
Franz Michael Katz was a nineteenth-century German painter. He is known as a graphic artist, watercolorist, portraitist, miniaturist, collector and teacher.
Katz founded the Higher School of Drawing and Painting in Cologne, which quickly gained a reputation as a prestigious institution for the city's wealthy residents. He was also a member of the "Olympic Society," founded in 1809, which brought together lovers of art and literature. As a collector, the artist amassed a significant collection of paintings, copperplate engravings, and plaster casts of ancient statues.
Jan Frans van Douven was a Dutch painter of the late 17th and early 18th centuries from the Southern Netherlands, a representative of the Leiden School. He is known as a portrait painter.
Van Douven spent most of his life in Düsseldorf, where as court painter he painted many portraits, including portraits of the Palatinate Elector Johann-Wilhelm and his second wife Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici. He was also instrumental in the creation of the art gallery in the Düsseldorf Palace. The artist accompanied his sovereign on a trip to Vienna, where he painted portraits of the Austrian emperor and his wife, as well as other aristocrats and famous personalities.