Carl Marcus Tuscher

Who was Carl Marcus Tuscher?

Carl Marcus Tuscher was a German-born Danish polymath: portrait painter, printmaker, architect, and decorator of the Baroque period.

Tuscher was born in the Free Imperial City of Nuremberg in 1705 to humble parents. His mother, Ursula Negelin, was single, while his father is said to have been Ferdinand Tuscher, who gave him his name. He was educated at Findelhaus and later as an apprentice to a painter, director of Nuremberg's Academy of Arts, Johan Daniel Preisler, who was the father of engraver Johan Martin Preisler. When his apprenticeship was over, he had made considerable progress and was considered such a promising and accomplished artist that the city gave him a traveling scholarship to Rome. In Italy besides painting he lay now also to the art of building and made drawings for several churches and palaces, his projects for church buildings earned him a Papal Knight's Cross. He got employed by Prussian antiquarian Baron Philipp von Stosch, whose great collection contained over 10,000 cameos, intaglios, and antique glass pastes. Tuscher got a paltry salary for work, but during his learned patron guidance he got insight in the sciences and taught the classical languages.