8 facts about Johan Sylvius

Johan Sylvius (probably 1620 – March 1695) was a Swedish painter. He was probably born in Sweden, and possibly died at Drottningholm Palace, in Lovön parish, Stockholm county. Sylvius spent much of his teenage years and manhood abroad; however, little is known just about his early life. He may have been of German origin, and he worked for some years (1658–85) in Rome. During his epoch spent in Rome, he had the opportunity to breakdown Peter Paul Rubens and additional Netherlandish masters. Thirty-five pen-and-wash drawings survive from his grow old spent in Italy. These were originally the property of his colleague, Nicodemus Tessin.

Sylvius travelled to England in the 1670s, wherein he assisted Antonio Verrio behind the gilding of Windsor Castle. En route to England, he possibly stepped in Paris, where he might have studied Charles Le Brun. During his stay in England, he was praised by Peter Lely for his talent as a portrait painter. His most notable enduring works are the vast allegorical and mythological paintings (dating from 1685 to 1695) wherewith he decorated Drottningholm Castle. He also garlanded Slottskyrkan in Stockholm in the same period.

In the National Museum in Stockholm, there exist a number of studies of his works. In Rome, Sylvius painted an oil painting of unnamed date depicting Minerva, the Roman goddess of sharpness and strategic warfare. This oil painting dealings 164 cm x 122 cm. In Rome, Johan Sylvius afterward drew a pen and wash drawing on paper in gray and black, executed when pencil and beige ink, called Gravmonument över Ferdinand van den Eynde, or ‘Tomb monument on top of Ferdinand van den Eynde,’ after François Duquesnoy’s original in the church of Santa Maria dell’Anima in Rome. The latter drawing proceedings 38.2 x 23 cm.