Peter Strudel

Peter Strudel or Peter Strudl (ca. 1660 – 4 October 1714) was an Austrian sculptor and painter. His work forms the transition of Austria to the high baroque style. Strudel was born in Cles, Trentino. Between 1676 (when he was 16 years old) and 1686, Peter Strudel came to the Hofburg in Vienna and, together with his brother Paul Strudel, obtained a position as painter to the Imperial Court. Around 1690, he bought a property in the suburbs from the imperial "gewesten Hatschieren-Rott" master Romanus Bernhard Tschagon and his wife Marie Polixena. There he built the Strudelhof mansion, where he founded a private art school in 1688. This was the first general training centre for artists outside the painters guild, after the model of the Accademia di San Luca (1593) and that of the French Académie Royale (Académie de peinture et de sculpture, founded in 1648 in Paris). The school has been shown to have received government subsidies from 1692. In 1701, Peter Strudel (Praefectus Academiae Nostrae) became Reichsfreiherr and was appointed the director of the landscape academy. At the behest of Emperor Joseph I, this school, in 1705, became Kayserliche Academie. However, the activity of the academy temporarily ended with the death of its founder, when Strudel died in 1714.