Wittmer spent fifty years of his life in Rome and belonged to the famous circle of German painters and authors residing in this city in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Born in Upper Bavarian, he was taught - among others - by Peter von Cornelius at the Munich Academy. He accompanied the Bavarian Crown Prince Maximillian on a sojourn to Sicily, Greece, Constantinople and Asia Minor in 1833, and married the daughter of Anton Koch - the intellectual leader of the German-Roman painters - in the same year.

Wittmer was primarily a narrative painter, covering historical, mythological and religious motifs. The artist belonged to the later generation of the Nazarenes, and as such his style is most closely related to their...