HENRY JOHN VAYMER
(Genoa 1665 - 1738)

He was born in Genoa in 1665 by Endryck Vaymer, an excellent sculptor of German origin, who worked steadily for the Brignole-Sale (Sanguinetti) family and Paola Ricci, a young Genoese. Gio Enrico's first teacher was certainly his father. He then passed into the workshop of a mediocre painter called "Schiena" to reach that of the well-known Maestro Giovan Battista Merano. Around 1679 he went to Rome where he frequented Gaulli's workshop and met Giovanni Maria delle Piane known as Il Mulinaretto, a painter with whom he has often been confused. On his return to Genoa, in 1684, he began his activity as a portraitist with great success, dedicated above all to the local nobility, inspired by the elegance of French painting and the work of Anton Van Dyck.

In the first decade of the eighteenth century he was called to Turin, where he stayed for three years, by King Vittorio Amedeo II of Savoy to be portrayed with all his "Royal Family". And, in the second decade of the eighteenth century, the Savoy was called again to paint the portrait of the new sovereign Carlo Emanuele III, son of the previous one. Returning to Genoa he died shortly after in 1738.

Gio Enrico Vaymer is considered in agreement by the critics among the protagonists of Genoese portraiture of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Painting in excellent condition.