The Zurich artist Conrad Meyer (1618–1689) was a man of many talents – as a painter, draughtsman, etcher and chronicler, he had a lasting influence on the visual culture of the Baroque era in Switzerland. His art combines faith and observation of the world, civic morality and artistic curiosity, local roots and international openness. This exhibition is a rediscovery of an artist whose work was overshadowed by international greats for centuries. A selection of paintings, drawings and prints – many of which are being shown publicly for the first time – opens up a panorama that not only sheds light on the work of an extraordinary artist, but also reveals a piece of Zurich and Swiss cultural history.

Between tradition and new beginnings

Conrad Meyer grew up at a time when Zurich was characterized by the spirit of the Reformation, humanism and the aspiring bourgeoisie, but also by plague, war and religious austerity. As the son of the painter and engraver Dietrich Meyer the Elder, he received a solid education in his father's workshop before his years of travel took him to Bern, Frankfurt, Augsburg and Munich. In Frankfurt, he worked in the workshop of Matthäus Merian, where he encountered the Dutch and Flemish art of Rubens, Bloemaert and Jordaens, studying their powerful painting style and precise landscape conception. This experience sharpened his eye for international art and the visible world, for perspective, composition, light and atmosphere. He returned to Zurich in 1642, where he remained an outstanding artistic figure for over four decades.

Copper and paper

Printmaking is at the heart of Conrad Meyer's oeuvre: Over a thousand prints by his own hand – biblical scenes, moral allegories, topographical views – testify to his status as an innovative engraver. Together with the Zurich poet and theologian Johann Wilhelm Simler, he founded the tradition of the Zurich New Year's Leaflets, in which art, text and morals were combined to form a genuinely civic educational project – an idea that fell on fertile ground in 17th century Protestant Zurich and which continues to this day.

Meyer was not only an artist, but also a chronicler. In his Housebook – now in the Zurich Central Library – he described the life of his family and the world of the Zurich bourgeoisie with remarkable vividness. This makes him one of the earliest writers on art in Switzerland. His exchange with the Frankfurt artist Joachim von Sandrart, the author of the important Teutsche Academie, is evidence of his integration into the intellectual network of European Baroque culture.

Source of income: Portrait

In a reformed city like Zurich, portraits were a secure source of income for artists, so it is not surprising that Conrad Meyer, as a leading painter, created around two hundred portraits of Zurich's upper classes – guild masters, councillors, clergymen. The paintings usually show little pathos and only rarely psychological penetration, but a great deal of technical precision and sobriety. One often senses that these are commissioned works of an almost artisanal character – only rarely does much passion seem to have been involved. His drawings of himself and his family, on the other hand, reveal a sensitive and thoughtful spirit.

The explorer of the Swiss landscape

Conrad Meyer probably made the most significant contribution to Swiss art with his landscape paintings. He was one of the very first artists to understand the familiar landscape as a subject in its own right and to incorporate it into the visual arts. His drawings, sketches and paintings show a Switzerland that is no longer just a backdrop, but an object of contemplation.

His journey to the Alps in 1655, which he undertook with the Dutch painter Jan Hackaert, was particularly groundbreaking – the first documented artist's journey to the Alps. The drawings he made there are considered "incunabula of Swiss landscape painting". They no longer show the mountains as a distant threat, but as a reality to be marveled at. Meyer thus paved the way for the great Alpine painters of the 19th century, from Alexandre Calame to Ferdinand Hodler.

His technical approach was also innovative. Equipped with a sketchbook, pencil and brushes, Meyer wandered around Zurich in search of picturesque motifs. However, he did not just work with a sharp pencil, but also picked up a brush and breathed freshness and life into his sketches with black ink or colored watercolor.

Reception and reassessment

Even Johann Caspar Füssli, who wrote the first Swiss art history, called Meyer "worthy of all respect and admiration" in 1769. Nevertheless, he remained a marginal figure in art historical literature for a long time until 1979, when he was brought to the attention of the Helmhaus Zurich as the "inventor of Alpine painting". In 2025, Conrad Meyer received his first comprehensive academic treatment with the first monograph Mühlsteinkragen und Totentanz (Millstone Collar and Dance of Death), published by an interdisciplinary group of researchers. The exhibition in Winterthur is a visual contribution to the reassessment of this exceptional artist. It attempts to show that even in Zurich, in the shadow of the great European metropolises, artistic thinking of international standing took place – characterized by faith, curiosity and a deep sense of the visible world.