Michael Sigismund Frank

Michael Sigismund Frank (1 June 1770 – 16 January 1847) was a Catholic artist and rediscoverer of the lost art of glass-painting.

Frank was born in Nuremberg. His father was a dealer in provisions, living in comfortable circumstances, who destined his son to become his successor in business. But these plans were thwarted by Sigismund's fondness for art. The mother, without her husband's knowledge, had him instructed in drawing in the local academy.

Having lost his father in early youth, Frank was apprenticed to his godfather Neubert, who carried on at Nuremberg the business of lacquering and decorating wooden boxes and caskets. His progress in this work was rapid, but he stayed less than a year with Neubert. After returning to the house of his mother, who had married a second time, he once more devoted himself to the study of drawing, meantime painting boxes for other manufacturers at Nuremberg and earning enough to pay his expenses. On completing his twenty-first year his parents induced him against his inclination to wed Marie H. Blechkoll, the daughter of a hotel-keeper who brought him as her dowry the inn Zur Himmelsleiter. He continued his art studies while his wife managed the hotel. However, he now turned his attention to painting porcelain, to which art one of his guests, the porcelain-painter Trost, had introduced him. His success was immediate, and when, after a married life of five years, his wife died, he sold the hotel and established a porcelain factory. The undertaking, which brought him a good income, led him to travel in Austria, Hungary, and Turkey; in Vienna he made the acquaintance of several prominent artists, under whose instruction he trained as a colourist.