By Luciano Migliaccio
Portrait of Johann Christian Bruch (1736-1801), pharmacist at the town of Zweibrücken, Germany. The painting was part of a lot comprising twelve portraits of members representing five generations of the Bruch family, which Luiza Bruch Strauss and Gisela Bruch Eichbaum donated to Masp in 1977.
Wife of pharmacist Johann Christian Bruch, depicted in work n. 722 (Philippa Elisabetha Bruch Steinicken). Judging from the sitters’ ages, one could suppose the two paintings were painted on the occasion of their wedding in 1771. The works evince the influence of French and Italian portraiture in the first half of the 18th century in the more naturalistic depiction of the sitters and the more careful interest on the model’s psychological and facial features than on details such as attire and social status. To Pfeiffer (1978) these characteristics resemble those of the culture at the time of the Enlightenment. The model was mistakenly quoted as Friderike Philippine Bruch in the museum catalogue published in 1982 (Bardi 1982, p. 198).
— Luciano Migliaccio, 1998
