Melchior Steidl

1657 Innsbruck – 1727 Munich

Little is known of the early training given to Melchior Steidl, a painter of frescoes and altarpieces. Only after he became a journeyman with the Munich court painter Johann Anton Gumpp did his artistic personality begin to emerge. The master and his pupil jointly painted the new-style frescoes in the collegiate church of St. Florian. This gave Steidl the opportunity to establish himself as a fresco painter and thereafter he was in great demand as an artist, carrying out numerous commissions in Southern Germany and Upper Austria. Prominent among his achievements are the painting of the Imperial Rooms in Kremsmünster and the Bamberg Residenz and the works he executed in Fulda.