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(1) Johan (Johansson) Aureller (i)
(b Stockholm, 4 Feb 1626; d Medelplana, Västergötland, 21 April 1696). He was the son of Queen Maria Eleanora’s secretary, Johan Mattsson Aurelius, himself the son of a goldsmith from Nuremberg. In 1653 Aureller was recorded as town painter in Gävle, where his first documented works were the portraits of Barbara Cassiopea Aurivillius (1654) and her husband Olof Aurivillius (1661; both priv. col., see SVKL), which are acutely characterized but sombrely coloured. The interval between the two portraits is accounted for by Aureller’s presence in 1654 at the church in Delsbo, where he executed the decoration and a Crucifixion with the Virgin, St John the Baptist and St Mary Magdalene, with small portraits of the donors, Marcus Wilhelmsson Björkman and his Wife (all destr.). Aureller may also have painted another portrait (1654) in that church, of the same couple. In 1658 he was once more in Gävle, where he painted a magnificent large portrait group of the merchant Henrik Marhein and his Wife Margareta Olofsdotter Gammal with their Children (1659; Grensholm house), which represents his most assured portrait style. The couple are depicted with their four surviving children and two deceased babies, shown in their cradles, as though asleep. The formal style of 16th-century Swedish portraiture is here combined with a sumptuous attention to texture and colour that belies Aureller’s provincial training.
Part of the Aureller family
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