born Bösing b. Preßburg/Ungarn, 1667
died Nürnberg, 20. Jul 1740
Grave no. E 320 in Johannis cemetery, without epitaph. son of Jan, weaver. ∞ Vienna 29.11.1709 Susanna (buried 16.5.1759), daughter of Benedikt Claus, painter, one son surviving. He evaded an apprenticeship in weaving at age 15 by fleeing the family home. 1684-87 trained as a painter under Benedikt Claus in Vienna. 1687-1709 in Italy, first in Venice, then in Rome, where he painted portrait copies in piecework. Two years in the service of the Polish Count Sobieski provided him with the means to travel through Italy, including Florence, Mantua and Venice. 1709-23 back in Vienna, where he married the daughter of his former teacher Claus in 1710. Initially he was highly regarded in Viennese court circles, working for Johann Adam of Liechtenstein, Tsar Peter I (in Carlsbad), and Augustus the Strong, among others, but they later moved away from him because of his faith. He moved to Nuremberg in 1723, where he was initially taken in at the house of his friend Georg →Blendinger. By Rv. of July 23, 1723, he received city protection. Because of his good reputation, he received many commissions from the Franconian landed gentry and the Nuremberg council families. On smaller journeys he portrayed the Duke of Gotha (1726) and the Prince-Bishops of Bamberg and Würzburg (1727). The draperies in his paintings were painted by Gabriel →Müller. Of his supposedly far more than 1000 works, about 200 can still be traced in museums or private collections. His private life was overshadowed by his wife's infidelity with the preacher Ephraim Schlickeisen († 1747). In addition, there was the heavy blow of the death of his son Christian Johann Friedrich, who died of smallpox in 1733. In 1735 Georg Blendinger accused him and his wife, with whom he had fallen out, of distributing invective about him and posting it on doors in the vicinity of Kupezky's residence "im Hertelshof" (Paniersplatz 7/9). Kupezky, for his part, complained in Zurich in 1736 about the painter Johann Caspar Füßli (who wrote a biography on him in 1758) for insults. The artist suffered from podagra and a painful dropsy. At the instigation of the clergy, he received only an "unsung" burial because he had neither attended church nor participated in communion. His widow married Ephraim Schlickeisen in 1741. The Erlangen newspaper writer Johann Gottfried Groß took her in and sold a large part of Kupezky's paintings, which came from her estate, to Margrave Friedrich of Bayreuth. Panzer recorded about 50 portraits of Nuremberg citizens, most of them engraved by Bernhard →Vogel or Valentin Daniel →Preißler. Panzer also listed his portrait in several variants; a medal was also struck in his honor. According to Will Münzbel. Vol. I, p. 22, he left a fortune of 6000 fl.
MuS: BAMBERG, KS. BERLIN, art cabinet MUNICH, BNM. NÜRNBERG, GNM; -, MStN: ca. 12 paintings; pen and ink drawing.
Lit.: ADB; Thieme-Becker; Will, Münzbel. I, p. 17 ff; Will, GL V, p. 428 u. VI, p. 264-271; E. Safarik: Johannes Kupezky 1667-1704, Prague 1928; Campe, 1933; Baroque, 1962; Wilh. Schwemmer: Johann Kupetzky, in: Lebensbilder Franken 7, 1977; Augsburger Barock, 1984; Stadtlexikon 2000; A. Eduard Safarik: Johann Kupezky, Ein Meister des Barockportraits, 2001.
Exhibited: 1840/1; 1906/2; 1954/3; 1959/4.
Style: Baroque