Brief Biography- Balthasar Denner from Altona-Hamburg was a distinguished miniature portraitist. He trained in his hometown and spent two years in Danzig learning oil painting. Painting the heads of older men and women was his speciality. Wherever he toured, he took a portrayal of a mature woman which gave reference to his skills; he turned down the sum of five hundred guineas for it.
His travels took him to Amsterdam, London, and Copenhagen, undertaking commissions for nobility. Emperor Charles VI, the King of Denmark, and Czar Peter were among his patrons. Charles VI was so impressed by the head of the older woman he paid him handsomely for it and locked it in a cabinet for safekeeping. He subsequently paid him the same for painting an older man’s head.
One of his better-known portraits was of George Frideric Handel, the composer. The artist Dominicus van der Smissen, a pupil of his, was known to have famously married his sister Katherina. Denner spent his last years in Rostock, where he died in 1749.