/internal/media/dispatcher/5267/fullOutdoor Merriment with Dancec. 1740[Franz Christoph Janneck]Franz Christoph JanneckOil on wood An elegant young couple occupies center stage; they are enjoying themselves dancing. The painter does not reveal whether there was a specific reason for this gathering, but genre paintings such as this continue to define our notion of life in the Baroque period. In truth it was probably rare for life to be so carefree, evenfor the wealthy classes of the population: diseases, plagues, and death were ubiquitous at the time. Yet this fact detracted in no way from the joie de vivre that we associate with the term “baroque,” and paintings like this sold like hot cakes. The reason for this was that collectors still coveted the work of seventeenth-century Netherlandish masters. As demand far exceeded supply, artists like Janneck turned their hand to similarly contrived pictures. To detach the scene from the present, the figures are clad in garments from bygone times. In terms of the delicate color scheme, both Janneck and his contemporary Platzer surpassed the artists who had gone before them and became masters in their own right.Paintinghttps://sammlungtest.belvedere.at/objects/2973/rdf