Bartholomeus Strobel

His largest and most impressive painting, the Feast of Herod with the Beheading of St John the Baptist in the Museo del Prado, combines an ostensible religious subject with a lavish depiction of a contemporary court banquet and many portraits of leading figures in Central Europe, whose identification remains uncertain.

Breslau was then part of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown within the Holy Roman Empire, with the Catholic Habsburg monarchy in possession of both, although most of the aristocracy and gentry were Lutheran.

[2] In 1618, when he is documented in Danzig (Gdańsk), he received a "Freibrief" from the Emperor, enabling him to work anywhere in the Holy Roman Empire without the permission of the local guild; the award was repeated in 1624.

[3] The early part of his career is only patchily documented, and few works survive, but he was retained as court artist by the Habsburg Archduke Charles of Austria, Bishop of Wroclaw, leader of the Imperial party in Silesia, and from 1625 by his successor Prince Karol Ferdynand Vasa, son of King Sigismund III of Poland.

By the mid-1620s he was evidently rather successful, and other patrons included John George I, Elector of Saxony, King Sigismund III Vasa of Poland, and his successor Ferdinand II.

When an outbreak of plague added to the desperate situation in Breslau, Strobel decided to leave Silesia for Poland, and settled in Gdańsk in 1634, receiving many commissions there and in other cities, both for portraits of burghers and aristocrats, and paintings for churches,[5] including the royal chapel of St.Casimir in Vilnius, (1636–37), and in Toruń in 1634.