Heinrich Bollandt

Heinrich Bollandt (1577/78, Thuringia - 19 August 1653, Bayreuth) was a court painter to Christian, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth; one of the first artists of what would come to be known as the "Brandenburg Renaissance".

His youth was spent in Thuringia and he most likely took his first art lessons from the court painter, Johann Spenlin of Weimar and Dresden.

When Spenlin died in 1609, Bollandt married his widow and developed a partnership with an artist named Johann Jeremias Erhard, who worked with him on numerous paintings.

[1] Although the Thirty Years' War had begun in 1618, he was able to remain in Bayreuth until around 1635, when he fled to Lübeck, where he was granted a permit from the Painter's Guild to be a "Freimeister [de]", with the condition that he paint only portraits.

[1] He remained there for ten years, living with an apprentice, Michael Conrad Hirt, who married Bollandt's daughter, Anna Maria, in 1638.