Martin Johann Schmidt

Martin Johann Schmidt, called Kremser Schmidt or Kremserschmidt, was one of the outstanding Austrian painters of the late Baroque/Rococo along with Franz Anton Maulbertsch.
He was born at Grafenwörth, lower Austria, a son of the sculptor Johannes Schmidt. A pupil of Gottlieb Starmayr, he spent most of his life at Stein, where he mostly worked in the numerous churches and monasteries of his Lower Austrian homeland. While the evolution of his style after 1750 shows that he had either spent a formative period in northern Italy or had at least had extensive contact with northern Italian works of art prior to that date, his works are also clearly influenced by Rembrandt and the great fresco-painters of the Austrian Baroque, Paul Troger and Daniel Gran.
Despite not having received formal academic training, in 1768 he was made a member of the imperial academy at Vienna due to his artistic merits, which by that time had already been recognized by a wider public inside and outside of Austria.
Primarily he painted devotional images for private devotion and churches, including a considerable number of large altar paintings.