Martin Hohenberg, or Martin(o) Altomonte, was born 1657 in Naples as the son of a Tyrolean baker, Michael Hohenberg, who lived in that city. He died in Vienna in 1745. Altomonte studied in Rome with Giovanni Battista Gaulli, called Baciccia, then with Carlo Maratta. In 1684 Altomonte was called to Warsaw, where he became court painter to King John III Sobieski. After settling in Vienna around the year 1700, he was appointed professor at the painting academy in 1707. In 1716 Altomonte painted frescoes in the Untere Belvedere palace in Vienna, worked in Salzburg and between the years 1719 and 1728 he was active mainly in Upper Austria, working, for example, for the monasteries of Sankt Florian and Kremsmünster. As early as 1729 he probably had a workshop in the monastery of Heiligenkreuz near Vienna, where he was buried. Together with Johann Michael Rottmayr, Altomonte was the initiator of Austrian Baroque painting. We know numerous oil paintings, frescoes, illusionistically painted altars (so-called visionäre Altarbilder) and drawings by Altomonte. His style is based on the interpretation of late Baroque Roman and Neapolitan motifs, in particular on the works of Luca Giordano and sometimes also Sebastiano Ricci. In the church of the Teutonic Order in Ljubljana is an altarpiece of Saint George by Altomonte which the court in Vienna donated in 1715. The Pokrajinski muzej in Ptuj holds a large altarpiece from Velika Nedelja, The Virgin Mary with Jesus and Saint George, which is signed and dated 1727.
Lit.: Hans Aurenhammer, Martino Altomonte, Wien-München 1965; Elfriede Baum, Katalog des Österreichischen Barockmuseums im Unteren Belvedere in Wien, Wien-München 1980, pp. 34-35.