Biography

Austrian painter. He came from a family of artists in Vienna, his father was a sculptor. After his studies at the Vienna Academy in 1738-49, he worked in Brünn in the 1750s and in Prague in 1760. Kracker, a significant Austrian artist of baroque, spent most of his life in Hungary.

He first visited Hungary in 1757 to paint three side-altars for the church in Sasvár and several frescoes for the cathedral and monastery in Jászó in 1762-65. He worked most of the time in Eger from 1765 until his death. He painted the high altar with St. Anthony and the side-altar with St. Anne for the Minorite church, Eger, in 1769-70. His major work is a fresco in the Library of the College in Eger (1778) which shows the council in Trident, and a fresco in the Podmaniczky Castle, Aszód. His late works prepared the way for classicism.