Friedrich Achman
Swiss · Heraldic painting and architectural decoration · documented at Lenzburg in 1598.
Friedrich Achman was a heraldic painter based in Laufenburg whose activity at Lenzburg Castle is documented in 1598. This year dates a commission, not his birth. His name appears in the accounting records and historical literature devoted to the castle.
In Die Lenzburg, published in 1904, Walther Merz records that Achman painted the gateway and its crowning stonework in oils, three years after the stonework had been completed. The heraldic decoration includes the arms of Bern, lions holding a sword and an imperial orb, and the arms of the bailiff Anton von Erlach. Anton Frymund executed the stone carving; Achman supplied its painted finish.
The painter was also commissioned to transfer the arms of Bern and the bailiffs from the wall of the great hall onto stout canvas. He produced three panels: one bearing the Bern arms, painted in oils and gilded, and two displaying the bailiffs’ arms in glue-bound paint. This commission defines his contribution to the castle’s official decoration in the late sixteenth century.