Biography

Austrian painter of historical paintings and portraits. He was first taught by his father, Franz Knoller (d 1773), then he was a student of Paul Troger and Michelangelo Unterberger at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts (1751-53), In 1755 he travelled to Rome and Naples. In Italy he came into contact with Graf Karl Joseph von Firmian who, as Imperial Governor of Lombardy, entrusted Knoller with decorating the Palazzo Firmian-Vigoni (destroyed) in Milan.

Between 1760 and 1765 Knoller was again in Rome, where the works of Pompeo Batoni, Anton Raphael Mengs and Anton von Maron had a decisive impact on him. These classicizing influences show in his Martyrdom of St Catherine (1763) and Martyrdom of St Sebastian (1765) at the Klosterkirche at Ettal and the altarpiece in the Karlskirche at Volders, St Carlo Borromeo among Plague Victims (1769).

In 1793 he taught at the Milan Academy of Fine Arts.