Bernando Monsú (eberhard Keilhau) Biography
Bernhard Keilhau, known as Bernardo Monsù, was born in 1624 in Helsingor, Denmark.
Eberhard Keilhau, known as Keil, was one of Denmark's most celebrated painters and perhaps the most important of its ancient artistic tradition. In Italy he was known as Monsù Bernardo, and at the young age of eighteen he arrived in the Netherlands, where he gained experience in Rembrandt's workshop in Amsterdam, from 1642 to 1644.
Although his first works were altarpieces, Keilhau soon became one of the most original genre painters, exerting a significant influence on the art of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italian painters such as Salvator Rosa, Antonio Amorosi and other representatives of seventeenth-century Italian painting. eighteenth-century, with subjects of a popular and visionary nature. Monsù Bernardo's father, Gaspard, was a highly regarded painter of German origin at the court of Christian IV of Denmark.
Before arriving in Italy, he was commissioned to carry out his first works in various German cities such as Frankfurt, Cologne, Mainz and Augsburg. Having arrived in Italy in 1651, his first commissions concerned portraits, frescoes and paintings of a sacred nature in the territory of the Republic of Venice. Over time, most of his works were painted in Bergamo (then a city under the control of the Serenissima), where he became friends with Evaristo Baschenis.
The painter achieved fame for his allegories such as "the Ages of Man", "the Five Senses" and the "Four Elements". His canvas "The Musicians", of a popular nature, is already present in the Civic Museum of Padua and anticipates his interest in genre painting. On the long journey that took him from Venice to Rome, Keilhau also stopped in Ravenna and Ferrara where he was called to paint the portrait of Queen Christina of Sweden, who had become Catholic and was also traveling to Rome.
